


Halley's Comet

by Sheniru



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: 2016 HBB, Angst, Blindfolds, HBB, Hannibal Loves Will, Lots of despair, M/M, Mention of Molly and Walter, NBCHannibalBigBang, Non-Sexual Touching, Outer Space, Past Relationship(s), Post-Canon, Post-Episode: s03e13 The Wrath of the Lamb, Romance, Science Fiction, Slow Burn, Space Road Trip, Surreal journey, Trust Issues, Will works on his own feelings, space travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-21
Updated: 2016-09-21
Packaged: 2018-08-16 10:37:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 21,850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8098906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sheniru/pseuds/Sheniru
Summary: [Post S3] After falling from a cliff in Hannibal's arms, Will Graham wakes up on what appears to be an empty spaceship set adrift into space. It’s a large, cold platform with walls covered in windows. At first he is alone, then Hannibal is by his side. They are forced upon a surreal journey, set to discover the hidden beauty of the cosmos as they slowly but surely work out why they got there, and most importantly, where they are ultimately going.Hannibal Big Bang 2016





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> First and foremost I want to thank [Curious Canvas](http://curiouscanvas.tumblr.com/) for the two pieces she did for the story. They are absolutely jaw-dropping and she deserves all your praises!  
> I also want to credit Cosmos : A Space Odyssey episode 3 and 4 for major inspiration and direction.
> 
> As much as i would like to, I am neither a scientist nor an astrophysicist, so there is probably a lot of inaccuracies. But I hope you enjoy this anyway :P

 

Hannibal gives him a nod and Will closes his eyes, immobile in the black leather chair, hands clasped around the armrests. His body tries to relax as he listens to the disarming voice of his psychiatrist. He hears footsteps on the floor and soon is invaded by the scent of strong cologne. Hannibal slides careful fingers into his hair and brushes the dark locks away from his forehead; his other hand rests against Will’s shoulder.

"I want you to understand that this is not because I have a lack of faith in you, Will. It is simply so that this experience will be easier.”

He let go of his shoulder for a moment. Will’s muscles tense and the corner of his mouth twists uncomfortably as something soft and silky rubs against his left cheek and temple. Slowly, Hannibal slides the blindfold between his curls and knots it in his back, effectively blocking his view. Only when the hands leaves him do he recovers his ability to breath. His head slumps down, as if his neck gave out.

Will raises one hand tentatively, touches the fabric upon his eyes with two fingers, and traces along the shape of his skull until he reaches its back. The blindfold feels strange on his skin… it’s pressure is lax enough not to be a hinderance, yet it has a paralyzing effect on the rest of his body.

The darkness is familiar; he’s been there countless of times. He should be terrified, but he realizes it’s not the case. He pictures an ostrich with its head deep within the sand, while a lion roams nearby with palpable hunger; the bird isn’t scared though, it still believes in its ability to fly.

Will discovers himself standing in the middle of the ocean. Blindness offers him a boat to stand on, yet it is lost to the lulls of many waves. Hannibal’s presence serves as a beacon to where he should sail. He’s at a distance, visible through the mist, howling in dark pockets of his mind.

It is an uneasy task to quiet him.

The music comes almost as a relief, the weight of the silence too much for his shoulders to bear. It’s different from Hannibal’s usual repertoire; not a melody but sounds.  Percussions clamours without competition, claves and oboe whispers secrets to each other under the dull growl of a french horn and, hidden, the melancholic singularity of scattered piano chords. He offers a caustic smile.

He can visualize Hannibal nimble walk back to his chair. The leather creases under his weight and the folds of his pants brush as he crosses one leg over the other. Will can fill in the blanks, imagine his body lean forward, his arms rest on his knees and his head slightly bow to the side, expectant.

"Can you hear me, Will?"

He nods amidst the discordant sounds, amusingly pliant.

"Good.” Hannibal licks his lips. “I want you to listen to this music, concentrate on it, and then gradually eliminate the existence of every single thing you perceive in this room.”

It is not a hard task. His mind works slowly along the corridors he so often used during crime scene reconstruction. Erasing Hannibal is as easy as a sweep of broomstick; the single, sharp beat of a metronome handle. It’s a painful exercise though. The emptiness it leaves quickly becomes eerie, and acoustic desperation transpires through the edges. He has trouble keeping his world empty this time because he has not been tasked to do something within it.

Without a Hannibal Lecter, no interference comes forth but the laconic derision of his own thought process.

He’s floating, aimless, the world around him fragile, like a soap bubble. He is the only material entity of his world. Still blind, he wills in some light, and soon, like an epidemic, stars begins to pop in every direction. He realizes his power almost immediately, and spreads out the cosmic diaspora as he sees fit. Soon he adds planets and nebula, and paints with bright and diluted hues.

A world without Hannibal is _his_.

He notices he is breathing rapidly. There is a disconnection he cannot make with his body, as he clenches at the armrest in fear of falling. The stars are now by millions,spreads out everywhere out of his control, taking a life of their own.  

"This isn't working." Will gasps. “Whatever this is, it’s going all wrong.”

Hannibal has moved. He listens carefully but nothing contradicts his absence. Will can’t see, but he’s certain the chair before him is empty. He calls out for his name, agitation weakening his voice. He forgets his ankles and wrist are not bound to his chair and start trashing. The mere thought he ought to trust Hannibal makes planets crush against each other and gravity contract.  

He tries to calm down; he’s losing balance, as if the floor is due to cede under his weight and drop him overboard. He attempts to stabilize the boat, scatters himself on the deck; he finds the rope but it is gnawed and the anchor is gone.


	2. Chapter 2

Will doesn’t wake up. He just opens his eyes. 

His body is fine and his mind is well-rested. He can see a ceiling high above his head, dark, yet lit in a diffused, almost mathematical way. It resembles the plays of a kaleidoscope.

He is numb; his mouth is dry and his body too heavy to move. His eyelashes flaps like the wings of a hummingbird but his vision still takes some time to clear. The smell of cilantro and thyme, the texture of leather from under the pad of his fingers, the rays of moonlight cutting through the curtains of the dimly light psychiatric office… all previous sensations persists, like ghosts. He parts his lips, curved in the shape of a heart and exhales one long sigh once stuck at the bottom of his throat. 

It takes time, but he manages to sit up. 

He is at the centre of a large room surrounded by walls of glasses, like a shark tank a the zoo. He doesn’t react immediately. He pulls himself in a better position, straightens his posture and crosses his legs. The room is circular, and empty, with tall ceiling and flat, cold, metallic floors. Upon each of the glass windows is projected moving pictures of lights and colours. He watches them with detachment, their visuals a blur, until he’s dizzy and needs to look elsewhere. Behind him is nothing but the same. 

Perhaps his lack of reaction stems from the familiarity of the settings… They bear a strong resemblance from his earlier dream. Wide and empty, with stars spread out everywhere to see.

It’s as if he’s suspended in a pocket of cosmos. 

Stars looks like grains of sugar scattered on an ebony counter, and, mixed in, clouds of amber gases and colours rises alight. It feels like _his_ , the product of an impetuous mind. A soft sliver of pride curls in his belly. His heartbeat slows down and his body relaxes; his mind finds the same sort of peace it has achieved earlier.

His hands explore the floor; he searches for the juncture between the drilled tiles, seeks out to recognize the material. It is cool to the touch. Then, fingers brush at his wrist and find their way up to his shoulder. He let them run over the material, folds undulating waves under his fingers. Something’s amiss. 

_Was his shoulder okay?_

The question surprises him at first. He feels no pain, no traces of unpleasantness. There are no tears in the fabric of his shirt, which still smells of Molly’s lavender softener. He rubs at the skin, but elicits no reaction. He pauses. 

He remembers a knife, the pull of a strong hand grasping at his chin and pushing his head up to the sky where he sees stars. The blade pierces his flesh, cuts deep. He gasps; his vision is troubled. There’s the persistent smell of the ocean, the muted sound of the waves calling for him over and over. 

Will opens his eyes and he feels cold and lonely. He looks down at his lap where his hands now rest open on his thighs; they are clean. He closes them once, places them on the floor again, and spread them out like a butterfly’s wings, or the bones of a ribcage. He watches them in silence. The soft, luminescence light emitted by the windows covers him in a veil of dissonant colours. 

He notices that, just like his wounds, his wedding ring is missing. He has no memories of ever taking it off. 

He pushes his body forward and tries to get up. At first, to his surprise, he succeeds, then he topples over, and staggers to regain balances, his own feet going rogue. He catches a glimpse of brown shoes he is certain he hasn’t worn in ages. Old boots left at a local church in a box years ago. He touches his stomach, follow the line of his button-up white shirt, then his pants.

The deck is wide enough to contain all the rooms of his house set side by side, he thinks, and it would surely take a while to tour. Instead, he moves toward the window. 

His footsteps echo loudly, the only sound in the room, and he grits his teeth in protest. He doesn’t want his presence to be known or acknowledged, nor to disrupt the inner sanctitude of this place. As he approaches, the panoramic view widens, and as it grows, realization etches its way in his mind. Up close, it’s hard to hide away from the truth. The reflection staring back at him looks ridiculous, opened mouth and eyes wide, like that of a fish. 

The view isn’t confined to its frame anymore; it spreads out to wherever he looks. It continues up above and down below, on every angles. His shoes edges above emptiness and he’s taken by a violent fit of vertigo, exacerbated by the flight of billions of stars growing bigger and wider as they approach. They never hit, and disappears up, above and below; away from the gigantic clouds of gold and coppery dust, and the dark alien matter around them. 

Will presses his hand over the window for support, dizzy, and pulls it away just as suddenly, as he suffers through a sharp pain. He rubs his palm slowly; it feels like a burn. The windows, he realizes, are searing cold.

He looks down at his hand again and closes it. He can feel the weight of the knife, and pulls it from his shoulder. He doesn’t let go even if it’s covered in his blood. He turns around, fire shooting in his veins, and takes in the shape of the great red dragon, adrenaline rushing up in his ears. Amidst the chaos, Francis Dolarhyde is covered in the moonlight. He stands tall, open, and most importantly, distracted. 

Will closes his eyes, pulls his hands around his skull, and presses against the fire burning between his temples. The emotions are still vivid and they suffocate him. He tries to remember other times, a different day. He quickly digs out memories of Molly with red cheeks, running towards the shed with the dogs, finds her laughing at him on the porch, as he brings out mug of hot cocoa for her and Walter and spills it all over himself. 

These images don’t distract him well enough. Soon, the truth of his surroundings comes hurling back at him. He needs to get away. He gives one last look at the intolerable sight and backtracks to the centre of the room. He let his body flop on the ground. 

Images twist themselves inside his head, crashing over each other in a disorganized cluster of familiar faces, all calling his name. He cannot put them back in order.

The only thing he remembers with clarity is falling. He thinks he still is.

.

Later, much later, when his mind finally cools down, Will tasks himself with inspecting his new environment. He walks across every windows, numbers them, and tries to find ways to differentiate them from each other. They are all similarly thick, around 7ft wide, and undamaged by time. No thumbprints or marks lingers on the glass. They are split regularly by large metallic frames rising all the way up to the ceiling. They have no beginning or end, hides no doors or any form of exit. Will often peers through with hopes of catching clues from the outside as to what exists on hypothetical floors above or below, but he never catches anything. 

Although minimal, the design feels old, and appears disused. A missing bolt here, or a small cracks there shows damage done by the passage of time. He’s thankful not to suffer from claustrophobia at this point in his life. 

Once he tires from of his explorations, he chooses a set of windows and settles nearby. The view changes constantly, and Will deduces that, whatever he’s standing on, it's probably travelling at high speed. Figments of lights, brightly coloured sparkles, clouds of gas and other unidentified object percolate against it, a sight not unlike that of driving a car in the middle of a snowfall. It’s calming, and gives the illusion he sits still as the particles rush to him.  There is no mistake to be made, though.

Everything is moving. 

Will lays on his back, one arm folded behind his head, guides his eyes towards the eclectic spectacle of light upon the ceiling, and counts each of his breaths. He touches his shirt. It’s different from the one he wore before, white, clean, made of linen; it is his, he is sure of it, he just doesn’t recognize it anymore. He unbuttons the last one of the row, and touch the line of mangled flesh crossing his belly under the fabric. The old wound itches often still, but he rarely gives it attention anymore. 

Suddenly he moves from one scar to another, searches his left cheek for swollen flesh, any signs of a cut. He massages the skin, buried under rough hair. Nothing remains of that night, no wounds from sharp rocks, no broken bones, no black eyes, no cuts, no marks. No proof it ever existed. Will wants to laugh. He smiles at first, but it hurts to smile and the expression freezes on his face until it becomes a pained grimace. 

“Why am I still here.” He asks out loud, speaking for the first time. It’s so low he barely hears it himself. 


	3. Chapter 3

He waits, but nothing changes. The light stays the same, and so does the view, more or less. He doesn’t have the will to search for a meaning to all of this. He just keeps on breathing. Sometimes, he moves, but he mostly remains still, sitting or lying down, as if ravaged by exhaustion. He is not, but he likes to think he is. 

His thoughts are blank, their absence a relief. Loneliness doesn’t devour him, isolation feels as familiar as a second skin. His own reflection looks aliens to him, so he strays away from it. Confinement isn’t an unfamiliar concept to him. The setting is more elegant than anything the _BSHCI_ ever had to offered; no torment hides in the shadows and this time, the room lacks discernible corners.

Will Graham always feared being locked away, until it happened. 

When he was within the arms of the asylum, he would flee the bars of his cell for the banks of a stream at the heart and comfort of his mind. He had paid only rare visits afterwards. Since then, the water had muddied, the grass became poisoned, the trees had lost all of their leaves and the air smelled foul and acrid. Autumn had passed and winter never came, leaving everything to rot. He’d no longer catches the glimpse of Abigail’s shadow; she fled this place long ago. 

So he didn’t go there. 

He tried so hard to bury the entrance of his memory palace away, yet he finds it’s disconcertingly easy to recover.

The first place he visits is his old house in Wolf Trap, tall and eerie, quelled under the heavy skies of winter. There are no dogs to greet him, they live with Molly and Walter now, back at their house on the coasts of Maine. They wouldn’t have stick around in any cases, not in the state he discovers the place in. The yard is neglected, and the house is but a shadow of its former self. Windows have been smashed to pieces, the wood planks have rotten, the paint peels like birch bark and the porch bears a large hole at the top of the staircase. The entrance is nothing but a gaping hole. 

The wind still carries the smell of autumn leaves and wet grass; it invites him forward. His shoes drags dust and gravels from the driveway and, as he cannot find his old doormat at the threshold, he rubs his feet on the chipped wood. There is no door anymore, it’s been ripped out of its hinges.

Will tries to flick the lights open when he peeks inside, but cannot find the switch on the wall. It’s just gone. He stands alone in the dark and notes the familiar contours of chairs and the lines of bookshelves under the windows. He counts each of his dogs’s cot, piled up in a corner, near the kitchen. The sight calls something up to his mind… but it is a painful memory and he buries it deeper within himself. 

.

He’s lost in the sight of the ever changing cosmic horizon. The more beautiful and diverse it gets, strokes and afterthoughts of galaxies and nebulas, or shifting miasma and flickering fireflies-like stars, the weaker his grasps on reality holds. He foments a fantasy where he smashes all windows and let them pour in, cascades of glitters covering his prostrated body.  The landscape is sparkling, abnormally alight, and hypnotizing. He searched for an explanation to the source of lighting before, but it proved itself futile. 

He brought Walter once, all the way up to the top of some mountain, a telescope under his arms, with the intent of teaching him about constellations. It was a cold night, and Molly had dressed them a bit too much. Wally had two scarves on, and even Winston, who tagged along wiggling his fluffy tail, had something wrapped around his neck. 

Will had planted the tripod a few inches deep within the snow, stabilized the base and adjusted the lenses, before scoping through the starscape to see what the sky had to offer. It was a clear night, with very little light pollution, ideals for these kinds of exercise. 

Wally was fidgety, scratching at his head underneath his big knitted hat. He kept asking again and again if they could _maybe_ find a shooting star. 

“Its suppose to go really fast and you can miss it if you blink! Jordan at school told me he saw one last year.” You could count more stars shining in his eyes than there were suspended up above them. “It goes _whoosh_ … faster than a home-run.” 

Will smiled, and awkwardly tried to divert his interest towards the less interesting prospect of fixed stars. 

“Everything is in motion up there, you know?” Will said after a while, pointing the telescope more to the left. “The stars, the planets, even us. We are hurling in empty space so fast.” 

“How fast?” Wally asked in sudden interest. He’d narrowed his eyes and looked up above, then back at Will, keeping some reservations. 

“Around 1000 miles per hour when the planet spins around itself. But around the sun?” Will smiled. “We’re being thrown ten times faster.”

“Then why do we always see the same stars if we move so fast?”

He helped Walter settle behind the telescope, and showed him the hydra constellation, all 17 stars of it. 

“Because they aren’t really stars. They are just images that travel along with us. Some of these stars that you see are long dead and gone. It’s their light that travels to us, from far, far away.” He rubs his lips with his gloved hands, as they were slowly freezing. “When some began their journey, there were no moon, no sun, and no milky way yet.”

“I don’t think it can be that long.” Walter snorted, trying to figure how to fit a sea dragon in the amount of stars he was shown. “But it feels a bit sad, now.” 

Images and motions. 

Will licks his lips. 

He finds the Italian chapel, with its cracked ceiling and walls covered in old depiction of saints. The stairs under which he saw Abigail last aren’t barred with police tape anymore. Discarded chairs lie upside down in disarray, as if the place has been fled in a rush. A lone, black veil bordered with shrill laces lies abandoned near the entrance door. The candles have all died down. 

He shivers.

He travels to the kitchen with broken panels of wood where he once sat to mourn, and finds himself amidst walls of stainless steel appliances reflecting back a distorted vision of his face. It looks much more like himself than any mirror had offered in recent years. In his garage, he discovers the _NORA_ , his boat, twisted upside down. There is a large hole on her flank, the mast is broken and the sail torn to pieces. 

He sees footprints other than his own in the snow near his house, he thinks it might be Alana’s, but every room, every corridors he crosses are empty. All of the doors are missing. 

He sits by the bed in his living room, pulls his knees close to his chest and let his head rest atop of them. His old house has become so large he wonders if he hasn’t shrink down while travelling. He doesn’t try once to fix the state of things, cannot find proof of something amiss amongst the ruins… yet something itches, like a ghost limb. 

Somewhere, he knows he will find a door to open.


	4. Chapter 4

Days pass, he guesses. It’s impossible to estimate the flow of time as there is no clock, or sun, or anything to rely upon. He splits his days by time of sleep and time of wake. He _does_ sleep; he doesn’t feel the need to but he aches for the rest.

His memory palace, a sketch at first, fleshes out more and more as he ventures on. The place doesn’t feel bitter anymore, and even if some scenes are sore to discover, he feels welcomed into them.

Wolf Trap is the one place he always comes back to. It’s one of the rare location where the sun shines sometimes, where the ground bears traces of dogs paws, where he can sit on an overturned log, feet dug deep within the snow, and watch the day pass without ever feeling sad. Every brushes of the wind that caresses his face carries the underlying saltiness of the sea and the faint rush of seagulls. It reminds him of his childhood.

He’d rub his hand together, blow hot air into them, even if he’s not cold, smile when he sees driverless cars pass down the road and, sometime, catch the traces of his own footsteps going further away, towards the river.

It’s the only place he can sleep in, without the discomfort and eliciting distress that haunts every other venues.

Will sleeps on the floor of the living room, or in his chair, near the window. He has piled up his books into small towers near the broken remains of his gutted fireplaces, to clear up the floor. It looks like a small fort and he likes to sit behind it.

Once, he slept in the kitchen, where he was certain he could still discern the faint scent cheap Earl Grey tea in the air. He’d brew himself a mug of steaming hot tea first thing when he got back from the river with some fresh catches. He’d rolled up his sleeves, lay the fishes on yellowed newspapers, keep his hand steady on the knife. He’d take one or two sips only, enough to feel the warmth descend in his belly, and then he’d discard the rest for a while, until he was done with his work.

He sometimes drags his body to the bed, near the door, only when he thinks he cannot handle the absence of his dogs. There are no mattress left, no covers or pillows, or anything else. It isn’t comfortable and still smells of sweat, headaches and nightmares. It’s where he finds himself last when the front door _creeks open_.

Will snaps awake as the door swings. Maybe it's the other way around. He catches the glimmers of stars, sanguine red, violet and purple bathe the floor. He pushes himself up with both shaky hands, works into a sitting position.

Hannibal stands near the only door of this doorless room.

He walks, then come to a brief stop and looks outside the windows. He seems to surveil the cosmic horizon, before he catches Will’s reflection and meet with an astonished gaze. Will’s eyes slide away almost organically, along the cheekbone, down the line of his neck and to the collar of his shirt, down to his shoulder and away. Hannibal is stained in the hues of the universe, like a unwilling canvas; it suits him beautifully.

“I apologize for waking you up.” Hannibal says cautiously.

Will nods, eyes blinking further away, as much as possible. He looks at the door, magically carved into a space he knew hasn’t existed before. It’s large, thin, and thick. Its upper portion is curved, lined with bolts through and through, and it bears a very generic pulled down doorknob. It blends in, as though it has always been there.

“How long have I been asleep?” Will’s voice is rough with disuse. He addresses it to the man but talks to his shadow cast upon the floor, stretched abnormally long.

“I woke up before you. I did not want to wake you up, so I took the liberty of wandering off.”

“Were you…” He swallows up the words as he talks, his throat tight. “…You were watching me sleep?” His voice is careful.

Hannibal frowns.

“I did.”

Will doesn’t know how to ask this better. Outside, the stars cluster over one side, leaving larger portions of the landscape dark and empty. The unbalanced view unnerves him, more so than the overwhelming colours that paint them as gems. He catches on the sight of a very bright star who seems almost fixed, near the edge of some windows to the left. He can never guesses the pace at which this ship travels, it always seems different. He is also covertly peeking at Hannibal… just to ascertain he really is there.

Hannibal did not wait for Will to find something else to ask. He moves, each of his steps hitting the floor in perfect rhythm, until he reaches the edge of the deck. He peers through one window, face invaded by licks of crimson and burgundy.

Will is careful in approaching the man. He disentangles himself from an imaginary spell that seems to have minded him to the floor; his feet hurts in disused and his steps are unsteady.

“It’s nothing we should be able to see.” Will spits out, accusation directed more to the man than to what lies beyond.

“The stars?”

“Where were you, _Hannibal_?”

“No more ‘doctor Lecter’ then.” His voice is sweet, and comes with a smile Will catches through his reflection. They are close, and he is glad he can still evade his gaze. Hannibal appears thinner than from his memories, but he sported these changes the last time he saw him in prison.

“Not for now.”

Hannibal closes his eyes, like a punctuation mark at the end of a chapter.

“I woke up by your side, not too long ago. I let you sleep and explored a little bit.”

Will digests the information. Hannibal did not appear to be lying, but he could be weaving his lies within the truth. He appears unfazed by his environment… taking it as it comes. Hannibal keeps his head pointed towards the cosmic activities, capturing details of Will’s unrest from the corner of his eyes, then, he spoke again.

“What do you think of this place?”

Will shrugs.

“As I said before, it doesn’t feel like something we ought to be able to see. All of this. And not in the sense that humans do not have the technology available to travel in space. I mean, stars don’t just flare up like lightbulbs for you to gaze at.” He motion at the windows. “ _This…_ is all artificial. It’s an unrealistic lecture of the world, it shows too damn much! These informations should only be obtained through x-rays or infrareds. This is…”

Hannibal’s voice is slow. “Meant for us to see.”

“Yes.”

Will is terrified of his own answer. He was not aware he kept so many words hidden in the back of his throat. Hannibal raises his hand towards the brightest star in sight, but he never tries to touch it. He watches it glimmers between his fingers.

He looks ethereal, wrapped in abnormal light, and for a moment Will wants to slip one hand over his back and touch him, see if it will pass through. Instead, he takes some steps back, presses his palm on the back of his neck and stretches. He studies his silhouette, follows the sharp edge of his jaw, the lean curve of his back, the simple clothes he wears, similar to his. Fitted pants and black shoes, espousing his lean body better than his own. Nothing out of place, not an inch off.

Still riddled with doubts, Will swaps his attention to the door still slightly ajar.

Hannibal seems to notice. He gracefully bows down and presents it with an open palm. “Should I offer you a tour?”

“How long have you been exploring?”

Hannibal smirks, and then inclines his head a little, opening him the way.

“After you.” He simply said.


	5. Chapter 5

Will leads the way in place of Hannibal.  This time, the door makes no noise as it swings open. A spark of curiosity runs through his cheeks as he covers up his eyes. He is inundated by golden light.

He steps over the threshold and finds himself in a small, narrow corridor. He quickly slides his hand over to his mouth and nose, wincing. A strong foul smell invades his senses, crude in comparison of the sterile environment he just left. He’s not used to the brightness yet, and has to wait a little bit for the details to sharpen. 

He closes his eyes, breathes through the mouth, and presses himself against the wall to open up the way. Hannibal inclines his head and slips past him effortlessly. They don’t touch, yet their proximity brings out a strange discomfort; it calls pictures to the mind, blood-soaked bodies grasping desperately at each other. He tries to shake them away, but they persists in the back of his head.

He pushes back to his feet and nearly bumped his head on the ceiling. It _is_ very low. He touches it with the tip of his fingers. He counts 8 encrusted circular spotlights spaced out regularly above him, the last one smashed in. Their circumference is no bigger than that of a tennis ball, and they give out an aggressive lighting, similar to that of fast-food restaurant’s bathroom. The ceiling is made of various opaque sheets of metal bolted together, some of them cracked or partially damage; one has a corner completely ripped out; it regurgitates a stack of pell-mell colourful wires. 

On each side walls, both in better shape than the ceiling, two sets of smaller doors face each others. Their design is different from that of the main entrance; they are slides-in models, with dugs-in cavities as guises of handles, and are made of a different, cheaper-looking type of material who discolour a lot. Several coppery pipes follow the edge of the walls, going all the way up to the ceiling and then towards the back, some ending with small red valves.

The corridor stops at approximately 10 feet, but this is no real end, because whole walls and ceilings have caved-in, blocking any further investigation. A small sliver of something akin to water dribbles down from the wreckage, and water damage is apparent to upper portions of the more remote walls. No molds or anything organic has spread, of course.  Hannibal is inspecting the pile of rumbles. 

“If I’d hazard a guess” He says nonchalantly,“…I would say this used to be a storage unit.” His hands wanders the debris, torn sheets of metal, broken parts of plaster-like structures and gigantic, gutted PVC tubes.

He points towards one of the smaller doors and Will, still slightly dazed, followed through. 

The first door opens with a low creak; Will has to give two other strong jerks of the wrist before it cedes completely. He takes hold of the frame with one hand and pushes his head inside as deep as he can; it isn’t lit. 

“The four of them are filled similarly.” 

The first thing Will notices is that it’s cracked with junks. He pulls his head back quickly as a violent smell attacks his nostrils. It reeks mainly of oil, but there’s something else underneath he cannot identify. Somehow, it reminds Will of garage sales on hot summer days. 

He takes a few steps away. The space gasps, open-mouthed, not packed, or quickly put together, not clustered either just… completely wall-in, a large mass of indistinguishable objects. Amongst what he can identify in the shadow are broken clock parts, pots, pan-like devices, broken metallic handles, part of what appears to be a bicycle handlebar, heavy and small stones, colourful shards of glasses, ripped tires, copper plates, rolled up fabrics, antennas, nets. The lack of lighting makes it hard to single out one item. 

“It could be a trash chute.” Will says, digging his head inside again. He holds his face in the hollow of his arm, and seeks out the compartment’s delimitation with his hand. It’s no larger than the size of a closet, but taller than the corridor’s ceiling level.

Hannibal moves to a nearby door and swings it open effortlessly. It reveals similar misshapen objects, perhaps only different in it being less packed. He grabs what appears to be a reddish coloured knob, and weights it in his palm. 

“Various items do suggest such an interpretation.” He rolls it over and inspects its underside, before tossing it up in the air like a coin. “…but some others inspire more practicability.” He throws the knob back and pulls out what appears to be a plate with specific indented rectangular shapes caved in it, not unlike that of a TV Dinner. “I rummaged through the content a little while ago, and it appeared to be quite the mismatched lot… as if it had been gathered in haste.” 

He closes that door and points at the destroyed wall. “I believe the ceiling just collapsed down on the original content of each of those cabinets.” 

Will makes a few small nods, then rubs both his eyes carefully. The light is painful, he has grown unaccustomed to such intensity. 

Hannibal feels even less real than before, massive in such a small, confined space. His feet thunders on the flat floor, and his hands keeps reaching out to all he encounters; the pipes, the wires, the crevices on the walls.  There is something peculiar in Hannibal’s motion, hard to pinpoint. A blurred edge that persists in-between each a movements, as if he’s losing focus. It’s distracting, dizzying even, like a play of lights on a wall that keeps varying erratically. 

Hannibal notices Will’s face paling and suggests letting the door open, so the air can circulate better. Will half-acquiesces, and tries to kiss the wall again so as open up the way. His vision distorts in a blur of motion and lights. He snaps back vividly when he feels the brush of Hannibal’s shoulder against his chest as he passes along.

Hannibal’s scent invades in headspace. 

It lashes at him in a powerful way; it’s too raw and naked, not hindered by any kind of prison chemical soap, fresh herbs, wine or the elegant, sophisticated colognes he used to wear. It doesn’t bear the scent of blood and emotions either, but evokes all of those things in a plethora of vivid pictures. A cascade of old memories and unwanted events comes rushing into in all in once. 

He flicks his head away, quickly, and escapes deeper within the corridor, one hand wrapped over his neck. He forces the emotions down, and crosses both his arms against his chest to hide his heart beating too fast. 

The air rushes in, and the next time Hannibal passes nearby, Will is careful not to get too close. Regardless, he needs to get out.

He opens one of the door nearby with controlled hands, and locates a roll of what appears to be industrial blankets he noticed earlier. The fabric is thick, rough to the touch. It is trapped under a few things, but it cedes almost immediately when he pulls it out. It’s similar to what one would use to protect large pieces of furnitures during transportation. It doesn’t smell good, but appears to be clean and warm.

Will immediately slips out of the corridor, back into the glass room. He pauses for a moment, unbalanced, the space much wider than he remembers, much darker too. The view has not changed much, the stars are still bright, all gathered one side, but the colours have shifted from that of a wound to a second-degree burn. 

He walks until he thinks he has placed enough distance between the door and himself, and settles the blanket roll on the ground. He’s not too far from the front-side windows, just close enough to get a good view. He unrolls the fabric and settles it in a bundle. Hannibal is by the door, observing silently as Will nestles in and slips hands under his hair to massage his head. He notices and motions for him to come. 

“Are you alright?” Hannibal asks softly. 

“I guess I am.” 

Will looks at him carefully, gauging their proximity. It has a reasonable distance. 

“Don’t you…” He pauses. “Don’t you think there should be some noises in there?” He swallows dryly. “The loud, reverberating hum of engines, motors, even propellers. It’s not farfetched, it smells strongly of oil in there. If we are… trapped… on a lower level, and the top plate came crashing down, it would not be out of place to speculate we should be located close to any sort of… I don’t know, engine room.” 

“You believe we are adrift?” 

“No.” Will says blankly. “Not at all, no.” 

He sighs and let his head rest in his arms. 

.

They scavenge the cabinets for whatever useful things they can find. The objects pile up between them, mountains of artefacts that don’t make sense being here. It’s a strange endeavour at first; Will prioritizes comfort and gathers all kinds of cloths and fabrics, while Hannibal picks on items that look useful to him. 

A peculiar feeling quietly settles in, and grows deeper as time goes by. Sometimes it’s a shape, or a colour, an impression that calls something up to mind. It’s familiar but unidentifiable.

Will pulls out a white mug, with remnants of painted orange flowers on its side. It sits strangely on his palm. He frowns as he looks at it. “I’ve seen this before when I was a child.” 

_It’s just that I don’t know when or where._

It then becomes an unsaid treasure hunts, objects becomes mementos to narrate past stories. It’s not an easy task by all means; some items are just so out of reaches digging them out would threaten the stability of the whole pile.

Nothing they find truly matter, in the end. They have so little need to satisfy… Hannibal shows him something that evokes a watering can of a faded green colour, its plastic side partial gutted. He pushes a kettle on the side. It’s battered but in good shape. They both remember it from somewhere, although Hannibal points out it’s quite a generic model. 

“The human mind craves these associations.” Hannibal explains, resting against one of the doors. He’s rolling his sleeves up to his elbows. “We all share a gift for pattern recognition, sharpened like a blade, who hungers for meanings of the sort. It tricks us more often than it shows us the truth. A gift from our ancestors, and theirs.” 

Yet he stubbornly withhold a few items without giving any explanation. Will doesn’t ask either. 

Will keeps a shoelace he found, slips it in his back pocket. Its bitten on the top, and bears a peculiar blue stain shaped like a kidney, similar to the one on his left shoe when he was 9. It’s a keepsake, he tells himself. 

A loud whistling noise startles him. Behind him, Hannibal has twisted the valve of one of the pipes. A quick touch earlier had revealed they were burning hot, and it does spit out steam from its tip, but also a small stream of water. Hannibal gives it one calculating jerk, and then squeeze it shut. 

He rubs his fingers on a piece of cloth nearby. “Water, I believe.”

“Too bad I’m not thirsty.” Will grimaces. Hannibal gives him a fond look. 

“Thirst or hunger doesn’t seem to plague our body in this place.”

Will shrugs, his fingers grazing at something that looks like a lightbulb, but is stuck too deep to try to force it out; it would probably break. 

“At least we won’t have to resort to cannibalism to survive.” 

Hannibal smirks. “A shame.” 

He moves his hand to his lips and rubs it over them. “Galaxies will be the biggest cannibal we will cross path with. They consume each other when unable to produce their own stars.” 

Will rolls his eyes,. 

“…Then again, I might go for a bottle of whisky, if you happen to see any.”

Hannibal chuckles, and Will tries not to, because his hands are deep into the lowest part of the junk pile and he doesn’t want to create a landfall.

.

Will is dozing on and off on the nest of blankets they have gathered in the big room. Hannibal stands near a window, like a sentinel, his figure always more emaciated than he remembered. Will squints his eyes, trying to chase away the blurriness that clouds his sight. Sometimes, he just sees right through him. He often feels as though he just emerged from deep sleep, and has to remind himself there is no such thing onboard this ship. You only nap, never reach anything deeper. 

Hannibal finally comes to focus and Will catches his reflection staring back at him, pale and similar to how he presented himself when he met him in prison. He’s captured behind glasses like a fish in a tank. Yet Hannibal doesn’t look locked up. Tall on his two feet, a contented look on his face. He sometimes presses two fingers against the surface before him, and the entire universe is confined behind his touch.


	6. Chapter 6

There is at least two feet of space between them. Hannibal never forces himself too close, but he never strays far away either; his eyes often lingers on him when he’s not looking. Will is grateful the distance is ever broach.

He knits his fingers together upon his lap, watches the cosmos to distract himself, or meditates. When he is exhausted by the view, instead of dwelling on the whys, he makes lists of what he considered inaccuracy of the hows. He tries to force the belief that the windows are all screens displaying projections, but it crumbles down whenever they crosses events impossible to reason as being engineered. This time it’s a blue galaxy, with its long tendrils harmoniously spread out of its white heart, with colours that border on indecency. Wide, and askew, so vivid it is hard to look at for too long; it couldn’t have been an artistic rendition. Will finds it hard to believe in its existence, even if it stands before him.  

He says nothing but his body must have changed, because Hannibal offers a few thoughts on music compositions the Middle Ages’ so beautiful  they were forbidden outside the sacred walls of churches. He seems to resonate with the wonders of the cosmic view far more than the shy desolation Will bore in his heart. 

“I already lost my suspension of disbelief.” Will replies with a coy smile, burying his gaze in the  folds of the fabric they sat upon. 

“Because it doesn’t feel real to you?” 

Will struggles with the truth, before he blurts it out. 

“Yes. It does. Even if I know it’s impossible, it does.” There is an edge of pain in the tone he uses. Will licks his lips. “Outer Space isn’t a pool filled with stars and colours. It’s a desolated, empty space, always expanding. It isn’t a performance, and there is _no way_ …” He gestures with his arms as he speaks, voice bitter. “…That we can be having a trip in the cosmos like this.” 

“What seems to anger you the most isn’t the implausibility of this world, but its incongruous technicalities.” 

“It should stop being so grossly exuberant.” 

Will’s head rolls down on his crossed arms, fleeing the lights before him. “I know, ‘like a boat engine’. Just something to loop my mind around to absolve myself from the bigger issues. Well, there is no bigger issue at present. There’s nothing here.” 

Hannibal smiles, but doesn’t offer his opinion. They keep to themselves for a moment, both looking in different direction. Will catches a whiff of Hannibal’s scent again and softened out, this time gradually comforted by it.

Hannibal tips his head on the side. “Try to recall a moment in your life where you remember watching the sky without torturing yourself with its plausibility.” 

Will blinks to Molly’s head, cuddled by his side as they lounge on the suspended chair of the porch. The moon is slowly rising up in the sky. She buries herself to his side and he carefully listens to her breathings. Her hair smells of honey and ginseng. He doesn’t want Hannibal to be there. He thinks of something more recent, the backyard of the Jacobi’s house, the full moon a menace above their head. They are standing in sticky snow, Hannibal invites him to shed clothes and look at the moon as Dolarhyde would. Will pushes the memory as far away from him as possible. 

The sky in Wolf Trap is bright and clear. Will has walked a little bit away from his house. He wishes he brought a scarf to wrap around his neck, but he doesn’t want to go back. Hannibal is waiting for him at the top of the stairs, watching from a distance. He can look at the sky from here, it’s familiar. 

He shifts the picture around, again. It’s not Wolf Trap anymore. It’s earlier. He recognize his father’s boat, but he cannot go back to this world yet. 

“Our senses often lie to us, Will. Perhaps these pictures we are shown aren’t real, or true. Perhaps they are constructions, or projections. But so is the sun, whose light travels to us 8 minutes late. Other stars travel a much longer journey.” 

His voice is composed, and it coaxes Will out of his memory palace slowly. 

“They make us feel as if we are the centre of all things, but we are only an obstacle to them. What we see is already a product of fiction.” 

The blue galaxy is behind them now. Will finds it burning a hole to the back of his head, and hesitates before he allows himself to look at it again. It’s still there, growing smaller and smaller as the ship pursue s its course, like a stain of wine on a perfectly white shirt. 

“I remember a picture I owned, when I was a kid. It was that of a blue galaxy, less extravagant than this one, but similar. I used to keep it glued on the wall above my bed.” His room wasn’t big on that boat, and he didn’t own many things. “I cut it out of a library book at one of the school I went to.” 

He pulls one hand into his pocket and touches the shoelace, circling it around his fingers over and over again. It helps his mind focus.

“You and your father used to live on boats, I imagine you are not unfamiliar with navigational uses of stars gazing.” 

“My father… Yes, of course.” Suddenly his head is settling into a more familiar territory. “He did. It’s something he was excited to share with me. It was summer, perhaps the best I had in my childhood. We used to move a lot at the time, and he took it as an opportunity to teach me how to recognize my way with the stars.” 

He closes his eyes to help himself remember. He did not speak for a while. 

“I borrowed a book at the library after that; an old, illustrated book about the cosmos.  I was very excited and we looked at it together. I suppose he didn’t have much work back then. He started to drink a lot after that. Later, he got me a box of second-hand magazines and some recorded tapes I could listen to on the subject; they were not exactly fit for my age, but I devoured them nonetheless.” 

Will smiles fondly as he remembers a night where his father, yet not mangled out by depression, had surprised him with a trip to watch the perseid meteor shower on a hot night of August. Will had cut out an article about it in the newspaper, which his father must have found during the day. They were so far away from any cities they had found the sky completely speckled with stars. Then, the perseid were all crisscrossing their view, all coming from a single point. 

.

Later, he watches Hannibal sleep next to him. He details the lines of his angular faces, the scar on his throat curved like the blade of a scythe, the peaceful way his chest push up and down. He wants to reaches for him, let a hand creeps over and see if the man will burst out like a soap bubble, and disappear…

Will shivers, and pulls one of the blankets closer to himself. 


	7. Chapter 7

Will is drowning in the waves and folds of rough covers as he wakes… each time he wakes. They look surreal, undulating in an otherworldly glow, as if he’s covered in quicksands. His hands quickly works up and down to disentangle himself from their grasps. 

Hannibal is always resting besides him, but he never shows any kind of distress. He fits in this terrible world and accepts it as it come. Will tries to keep an eye on him, in hope he will catch him slip up and witness signs of discomfort, or just a single bad thought spread over his face. 

They talk a lot, and dance around every important issues as they always did in the past, like  sword fighters paring strikes and never hitting the other. 

Their travels lead them to what, at first, presents itself as a brilliant white sphere, and turns out to be made of billions of smaller particles. As it grows bigger and bigger more, the ship firmly angles itself in its direction. 

“It’s a solar system.” Will says. “…Like the Earth’s.” 

“And what are those?” Hannibal asks.

“Comets. A belt of comets that surrounds a star. It orbits in the interstellar space until something  disrupts their circle and send them off out in the inner solar system.

_A veil of comets_ , chunks of ice, ammonia and methane revolving around its star, like particles of a snow globe never finding its bottom. Their ship dives close to its edge, in ignorance of any pulls of gravity it could have gotten sucked in. It sneaks between moving objects without changing its course once, even though comets skim dangerously close. 

Passed that point, the room grows a lot colder. 

There are no spare clothes for them, and as much as their body seems impervious to the desire of foods and drinks, it reacts to the lack of heat with the same unpleasantness that should be expected of it. 

Will stands near the windows in what qualifies as the back of the ship, and watches the trail of comets disappear in their wake. His fingers wander over his cheeks and jaw; they both also have been denied changes. He has not a single hair longer than it had been when he first appeared on the ship. The man reflected back at him was the same who kissed Molly on the head when he last saw her on the hospital bed, the same who had stared in the eyes of the Great Red Dragon and tricked him into his final downfall.

“This place isn’t as impervious to the universe’s entropy as it first led us to believe.” Hannibal brushes the folds of his pants away as he rises to his feet.

“I’m just glad we have confirmation we haven’t been in hell all this time. Too cold.” 

“The tibetan buddhists depict hell as a place of equally burning and freezing quality. Dante also describes the 9th innermost circle of hell as made of frozen lake of blood and guilt.” 

“Thank you.” Will said, glaring at him. “I don’t know how I could have led myself to doubt.” 

He slips his hand along the back of his neck and massages his spine. “This was all just a theory on _Earth_ … ” He pauses, and grins. “ …Can’t believe I’m saying that. Anyway, this globe we are crossing, the massive cloud of comets that surrounds a solar system, it was just a theory. The Oort Cloud, I think it is called. But we couldn’t prove it; our technologies weren’t advanced enough to observe something so far away.” 

Hannibal nods in appreciation.

“We are the first to witness this kind of phenomenon.” Will raises both his eyebrows, and to some extend, his ears. “…Of our specie, that is.” 

He snorts. 

Hannibal’s smile follows his thoughts, as if they share the same; his carries a different meaning nonetheless. 

_I’m glad you are happy. I’m glad we are sharing this together._

Later, they pass one particularly huge comet, so close it covers the front windows entirely. They are lounging in silence, cold wrapped around their shoulder like a shawl, and suddenly they are  casts into darkness. Hannibal breaks the eerie silence; he begins to sing. It’s a short piece sung in Italian, melancholic and longing.  His voice is light and beautiful; it’s the first time Will witnesses his singing. 

“Comets were always viewed as bringers of misfortunes; _bad omens_.” Hannibal says afterward. “It never differs, regardless of cultures or provenance. Its appearance came as an announcement of impending doom, disease, famine, and tragedy. The word ‘disaster’ finds its roots in ancient greek, from _dus_ ‘bad’… and _aster_ , ‘star’. A calamity from the sky.” 

Will, still enrapture in the beauty of the song, exhaled loudly. “Not looking good for us then.” 

A crescent of light peeks its way from under the passing block of ice. Many treasures lay dormant upon its surface, and Will raises his hands as if to grab them before they are gone. He glides his fingers over without ever reaching.

“Humanity often misinterprets when they search for a meaning to their suffering.” 

“We tend to get the wrong ideas about things we do not understand.” 

Will let his hand drops down on his stomach; it hits at the scars that bars his guts. He let his fingers slowly reach for it, and delicately massage the numbness away.

“I was ten. I think I read it in one of those magazines, or on the tapes… I don’t know. It spokes of an event that was so rare to witness you shouldn’t miss your chance. I got excited and tried to convince my dad to find us a telescope. I must have bugged him out of his mind, because he did.” 

Will sighs as he dives in his memories. He remembers his old man, who, back then, could barely pull enough of his wits to dress him properly for school. He managed to get his hands on a telescope, borrowed from an unnamed source. It was one of those rare moments of lucidity Will never could explained, but was grateful for.

“We would be visited by Halley’s comet. Haley was a man who tried to put into practice the recently published works of Edward Newton’s theory of gravity. He dug out archives of various sources, most from the Middle Ages, and gathered every sightings of shooting stars he could find. He singled out the repeated passage of one in particular. He theorized it was the same cosmic object who would periodically come back to our skies. He made a prediction. And then he died. The comet revealed itself on the date he said it would, and thus was baptized in his honour. Its last sighting was in 1986.” 

“And you witnessed it?” 

“I did.” A faint bubble of warmth grazed inside him. “Felt as proud as if I had discovered it myself.” 

The comet was nearly gone from view, leaving them bath in golden glow. Will was smiling, entangled in the images of the past.

“Would you sing again?” He requests.

Hannibal’s gaze lingers on his own for a while.

“There is a different song I would like to sing for you.” He says softly. 

He doesn’t start immediately, and when he does, it envelopes Will almost completely. It is Italian again, although sung on an higher register. It is gentler, delicate, like a breeze on a summer night. 

Will closes his eyes and let it slowly take him away. He does not know what Hannibal is singing about but this time, it is not sad. He wonders about its meaning, but never asks.


	8. Chapter 8

Hannibal is a stroke of brush against the luminous windows, arms crossed against his chest, leaning on his shoulder with his face half-turned towards the universe. There are many comets flying past them, some quicker than others, trailing their long veils behind, like a newlyweds. They are gathered close to each other. 

“I believe we have nearly passed through.” 

“Through what?” Will’s voice is half-smothered by his hand, coursing along the skin of his face as if to flatten its folds. He blinks again, the faint lights of the fast-moving objects dancing along his eyes and causing confusions and afterimages. 

Hannibal turns his head partly. 

“Your Oort Cloud.” 

“ _My_ Oort Cloud?” His voice takes a high-pitched turn as he coined the last word. 

“Yes.” Hannibal turns away. “Will Graham’s cloud of the unknown. Like driving through a snowstorm, following the lead of a single light.” 

“Ah.” Will scratches his head a little bit and let it roll back heavily on his side. He waits a moment before he smiles to himself, catching on to particular train of thought. 

“We’re just surfing along someone else’s solar system. I shouldn’t lay claim of it. Also, comets are free spirits… But I appreciate the gesture.” 

“No worries, we should be out of their realm soon enough.”

Will’s gaze is scooping up the floor where he can watch the travels of the comets in dancing lights. He hears Hannibal moving, and his shadows soon spread across the spectacle, engulfing everything. “I heard of your Edmond Halley in a different context than the one you narrated, if you are interested.” 

“My Edmond Halley…” 

He sits down by Will’s side, closer than he had ever come before and Will feels the hair on his arms raise, like little soldiers ready to defend him. It adds to his own amusement. He let one fingers slowly travel along the length of his arm, combing them to reason. 

“Do tell.” 

Hannibal settles down more comfortably, arms resting on his opened legs, close to his face. He narrates. “In the second half of the 17th century, the Royal Society, one of the most illustrious scientific society of England, invested large sums of money on a very detailed encyclopedia of fish, called _De Historia Piscium_ , or ‘The History of Fishes’. It was a very well crafted and masterfully illustrated book, who also happens to be increasingly unpopular. The Royal Society found itself lacking funds for any other projects afterward, and sat down on many unsold copies.” 

“I find myself in utter disbelief as to why people could pass out on such an interesting topic.” Will smirks. Hannibal’s elegant nod makes blood rush to his cheeks and he hides part of his face away.

“It was a lesson for the Royal Society to learn that intellect didn’t make sound business. Still, this came close to being an historical tragedy, as it left them with empty pockets when came the time to fund Isaac Newton’s _Principia_.” 

“We nearly threw gravity to the fishes.” 

“Or all the laws of motions at the bottom of the pond.” 

Will wasn’t hiding his smile any longer. “I don’t know which one is worst actually.”  He gestures him to continue, not losing his cordiality, which seems to particularly please Hannibal. “What’s it got to do with Halley?” 

“Oh, Edmond Halley was a clerk working for the Royal Society at the time. He was also a friend of Newton. He vouched for the _Principia_ to the society’s council twice, but it proved to be futile. So he decided to force the process of its publication, and ended up paying for it through his own income. Halley was not rich a rich man at the time, but he was impressed by the work and respected Newton’s discoveries. He appointed himself to edit, print and promote the book.” 

Will interrupted him again.

“Is this your theory of this place? We aren’t swimming with fishes right now and instead, we are travelling in space onboard Halley’s comet?” 

Hannibal was about to answer but he was distracted by something out the window. He pauses for a moment. 

“This… is not something I had in mind, no.” He finally answered.

The room was frequently passed by large objects and, like clouds blocking the sun on a windy day, it casts intermittent shadows across the room, more specifically upon Hannibal’s features, which Will was watching discreetly. 

The man settles on explaining a little bit more of the internal politics of the time, and Halley’s devotion to the project. As he did, a deep melancholia crept out within the narrative; stories of dead people from long ago, and friendship. 

Something etches itself up above their head. A very subtle rattling, like that of a mouse scratching walls at night. Will frowns and Hannibal looks up as he continues speaking. 

“The Royal Society wasn’t pleased with the way Halley had handle their business, nor that a mere clerk had tried to bypass their decisions. They first tried to fire him, and, ultimately, it just happened they had no money for his salary, so they decided to pay him with copies of the History of Fishes.” 

Will’s eyes were now moving from Hannibal to the world outside, distracted. His smile came a bit late for the punchline. They pass another comet, a bit closer than the last. He untangled his legs and walks up to the central window in an uncertain pace. Hannibal watches from a distance. 

“The comets are worrying you?” 

“Don’t they worry you?” 

Hannibal bears the same flippancy he carried on in the house over the cliff, when he served them wine and talked about impending doom. It strikes a chord inside Will.

An acknowledged laissez-faire. 

There is no shadow blocking their view, nothing to warn them prior to the impact. It’s violent, the whole ship is shaken like a rag doll. Will looses his footing, and is thrown forward. He wraps his face in his arms before he crashes to the floor and is jerked on the side. The enter platform seems to convulse, screeching and heaving in agony as if it was being torn apart. 

In the confusion, Will tries to get up again, but the floor is rolling under him, unstable, like waves of an tempestuous sea and the ship roars angrily. He falls again, this time badly, and crushes his shoulder under his weight. He quickly pulls his head in a cocoon, and closes his eyes. He stops fighting altogether and waits for the deck to stop moving. 

Loud, hectic noises wraps themselves around his head. He waits to see if upper floors will all come crashing down. There are long, metallic, scornful woes and cries, heavy, weighted friction and then everything collapse into complete silence. 

Will waits until he is sure it is over, and rolls on his back. He finds the dark ceiling above his head now cracked. 

He sits down, and winces as pain flares through his marred body. His head hurts and his vision is blurred and unfocused. He has been knocked down to the floor harder than he realizes. He pushes one hand over his face and forehead, tries to regain a certain sense of stability. 

Hannibal is collecting himself further away than before the impact. He tries to call out for him, but he finds a knot at the bottom of his throat, and is unable to. His thoughts soon clear out but his body remains in shock, and he wanders in a shaky stead towards the back of the ship. 

He can see the culprit plainly; a large block of ice missing a chunk on its side, getting away in great speed in a trail of debris from whatever it has strike of their ship. A hit and run. 

He catches the presence of Hannibal soon behind him. His reflection materialized nearby, a layer added over the comet’s fleeing shape.

“Are you alright?” Hannibal asks but Will doesn’t answer. He is tracking the bits of torn armature floating amongst ripped wires and shards of red glass, led astray by the pull of the comet, like pebbles at a car’s trail. 

“Sometimes I get lost in the meaning of all this.” His voice sounds so tired.

Hannibal motions towards him with intent to examine his wounded head but Will’s nerves flare back and he escapes from the man’s grasp swiftly. Hannibal hands clasp into empty air. He rubbed his fingers together and frown, visibly hurt. 

“Do you think it will hold?” Will asks awkwardly, looking up to the ceiling with mild concerns. 

“It depends. Do you conceive this travel of ours to be purposeful, or designless.” 

“This looks consequential to me. Aren’t we instigators of ‘Halley’s Comet’ now? Sowers of bad stars.” 

Something heavy settles down within Will’s belly, something he refuses to let go of. He struggles with the concept, before he finds the right words and enunciates it perfectly. 

“Comets follow a very definite route around a solar systems. It takes one million years for a comet to make a complete revolution around our own sun. And then… it would take just one small cosmic event, a feathered brush to deviate them from their interstellar course and send them off tracks. That’s how they begin their travels.” He looms over the glass window without touching it, as his fingers remembers the bite of the cold.  “We just set off a comet, influence it to go astray. Now it will travel on, until it becomes someone else’s ‘Halley’s Comet’.” 

He clears his throat.

“It could have pass us through, like a boat crossing haze, but it crashed into the ship.” His voice is horrified.

“You expected this place to be immaterial, yet finds it attacked and ripped from the plane of your mind.” 

“I’ve been trying to avoid thinking about it… it rattles me… what if I question it too hard, and it dissolves into darkness…” 

Hannibal’s reflection is pale and ghostly, it hovers above his shoulder, like an afterglow, fragile and ready to evaporate at any moment. Will squeezes his eyes shut and then opens them again, yet the opalescent figure is still there.

“Is it why you averted looking at me ever since we happened to this place, and only allow yourself to face my reflection? Are you so scared I might be gone if you look too carefully?” 

“Haven’t the thought crossed your mind?” 

“No.” 

Will turns around and faces him. Hannibal looks comically revolted by this idea, as if he has been presented white wine in a stemless glass. 

“I could not exist right now. I could be a construction of your mind.” 

Hannibal dismisses him completely. “My perception of this place differs too greatly from yours to even consider it.” 

“My perception isn’t very specific.” Will’s gaze sweeps the room, then he shrugs passively. “This could be some sort of afterlife, some last stretches of lucidity before the brain shuts down. Maybe this is what dying feels like for everyone; a long, pointless drift in outer space.” 

“So, to you, we are dead, or dying.” 

“Gone. We are gone. _I_ am gone. Nothing out of this place works, except as a bizarre distortion of the real world. It’s a respite and a long wait. I…” He hesitates, speaks quietly. “…I like to think of this as an ending. A place where the soul travels to lay down until it is finally gone.” 

Hannibal sighs audibly, as if his patience is being tried. 

“And yet here am I, by your side. This troubles you.” 

Will evades Hannibal pointed look but the man still presses on. “I saw you glance at me numerous times when you thought I was not looking. You were counting my breaths and searching for a pulse. You do not want me gone.” 

“I have yet to find that out myself.” He gave a weak smile. “There’s nothing new, or groundbreaking, in doubting the world outside ourselves. George Berkeley’s entire philosophical discourse is based on immateriality. He talks vividly about how our own perceptions are based on ideas. This world makes sense to me because it is only that… an idea. Space, and death, and you, refrained from inflicting any more harm onto others. These were the thoughts I last held on earth.” 

“Yet you said this place felt real to you.” Hannibal argued.

Will sighs. “It does, but I’ve been wrong before, about perceptions of my surroundings. I was clouded by my encephalitis, now perhaps I am with death.” 

“So you locked me up here with you.”

"I had... the desire for you to be here.” He admits. “It’s not too foolish a thought that I could have made you up. Why couldn’t I have?” He raises his eyes in a challenge. “Why wouldn’t you do, either.”  

To that Hannibal cracks a mocking, toothy smile that lingered on as he speaks next.

“You said earlier that you perceived what surrounded you as authentic. That you shouldn’t believe it, but it _felt_ real to you. Your presence is the only thing that feels real to me.” 

It was not something Will expected to hear.

“I find it easier to believe in the chaotic and surreal world laid outside these windows than I am in my ability to conjure you out of thin air.“

"Why?" It was indignant, and desperate. 

“You know why.” Hannibal holds their gaze for a long time before he decides to speak again. “It is impossible for me to predict you, Will. I never have truly been able to. You are unique, and this uniqueness is what makes you so dear to me.” 

“Maybe you should try.” But already he regrets his quick words, a desperate attempt to cover any of his further claims. Of course Hannibal has tried, he’d just spend three years in an asylum for this exact reason.

“I’ve met with you once or twice only, as you journeyed on the grounds of my memory palace, but those were always circumstances ruled under your own volition. I find comfort in that.”

Will's cheeks blossoms under an emotion he could not contain anymore. He quickly turns away, shaking in confusion, and pushes his hand over his forehead then down a little bit, along his nose and then to his mouth. 

"Well... I can't be as sure as you are." He pitifully replies. 

He wills himself to leave, but finds his body unmovable, as if his legs had turned to stone. He waits for Hannibal to turn and walk away, and only then does Will remember that, even in this place, he needs to breath. 

“Come, the room is quickly losing its heat.” Hannibal invites him to their nest and Will reluctantly watches himself comply.


	9. Chapter 9

Will is snugly wrapped inside one of the softer blankets, the grey woollen-like fabric still able to reach him under his clothed arms. His skin itches; the influx of sensation intensifies his own instability and overworks his nervous system. Even so, he presses it closer to himself, as it shields him from the outside world. 

He watches Hannibal, as he pulls out of the only other room, a flash of bright light passing over his angular figure. In Will’s mind, he is dressed in a well-pressed pale grey three-pieces suit, a periwinkle buttoned-up shirt and an ornate silver paisley tie. His hair is combed to one side, golden, longer, and his face isn’t emaciated or scarred. He rubs his hands against each other, before crossing the room in large steps, perhaps searching for a book or a piece of paper. 

He pauses near one of the large window; perhaps he caught something of interest from the corner of his eyes. Will observes him curiously.

The comets are gone but nothing has come to replace them. The view looks like an empty stage, where performers forgot to come back for the show. Hannibal’s appearance flickers, and now he is dressed in his regular clothes, a linen shirt and dark pants. His body is smaller under the fit material, and he looks older. 

Shadows dance upon Hannibal’s face, against his chest and over his shoulders. His brows curve into a frown. He paints his face with an expression hard to seize; its foreign and far away. Will can guess its meaning but cannot give a name to it. He shivers.

Unable to stand the silence, Will rises from his cocoon. He wraps his arms around his body and buries his neck into his shoulders to fight off the chill. He follows Hannibal’s gaze towards whatever point in outer space has caught his attention, but he cannot see much from his angle.

Hannibal is watching him now and Will uncomfortably smiles.

“Feels like walking down the roads in Wolf Trap on an autumn’s night.” 

“It did indeed get much colder.” 

Will stands awkwardly for a moment, before he walks towards the man. 

Hannibal stands a breath away, intangible, and immaterial. Under the layers of clothes and flesh, there’s supposed to be life, and a truth that Will fears to discover. He feels his warmth, and breathes in his scent yet his doubts lingers and poisons his mind. 

He hesitates. 

"Could I..." 

Hannibal blinks in acknowledgement. 

"Yes." 

Will's hand infiltrates the material world, pushing past the veil that protects his sanity. Before he touches Hannibal, he has one fleeting thought about the last time he did, and it makes his hand tremble, but it washes out completely when his fingers reaches for something solid and warm. It’s a tentative touch, he presses lightly, and then a little bit more, until he settles his palm flatly down. There’s contact, there’s texture, there’s information, and confirmation. 

Will looks at his own hand like it’s a bizarre object he does not comprehend. He rubs it against the fold of Hannibal’s shirt, almost surprised to see them roll under his touch. He stops after a while,  then slides it downward until he finds the pace of a heartbeat. 

He stops completely and pulls his hand away. He pauses, enough to register this new information, then he presses it back again. He pushes with a little bit too much strength and Hannibal’s entire body moves with it. Will closes his eyes.

His head was so light when he accepted the outstretched hand. He remembers vividly now. Hannibal, face covered in Dolarhyde’s blood, his eyes shying away from his, heart beating so fast. Will could hear it clearly, resting on his chest, as he untangled their destinies together and precipitated them to what he believed was their demises.

Now he feels the same heart under his touch.

With his other hand he grabs Hannibal’s. He guides it to his own chest, where he settles it in a mirrored manner over his own heart. He presses it down and traps it there.

Hannibal slowly expands and contracts his own fingers, gathering Will’s shirt in a bundle. He releases it and spreads them completely; the pressure is so intimate Will feels a rush of blood inflames his face, but he cannot look away. Hannibal’s hand is a powerful tool, and it has taken many lives. Will expects it to dig in his flesh and wraps itself around his beating organ. He looks down but finds it completely still.

“Don’t worry so much.” Hannibal murmurs softly. Will nods. His hand leaves Hannibal’s heart to wander some more, until it finds his shoulder. It curves around it, until it reaches for his back.

“This is where you held me.” Hannibal offers.

Will lingers a little while, before he follows the line of his arm, all the way down. 

“I’m scared you’ll disappear if I let you go.” He finds himself whispering. He wraps his hand around Hannibal’s wrist.

“Then, do not let go.” 

Will lowers his gaze and looks down where his heart is, still covered by the other’s hand. He carefully plucks it away and, holding both of his arms, pulls them around his own body. He cuddles in the embraces, joins both of their heart together and exhaled in relief.

Hannibal buries his chin in Will’s rich curls, and closes his eyes, pulling him closer still. 

“Stay with me.” Hannibal whispers. 

Will nods against his chest and smiles. 

.

Hannibal’s head is resting against Will’s shoulder. They had chosen to cuddle, it keeps them warmer this way, and hid the truth that none wished to let the other go. There is such a discrepancy between their body heat and the room temperature that Will notices he produces small bouts of steam each times he breaths. His arms are laced around Hannibal’s body as if the man is a buoy thrown a sea. Sometimes, he lets his hand wanders around the man’s neck, or his wrist, seeks the comfort of his pulse, and the contact of his skin. Nothing more… Hannibal is fast asleep, and Will doesn’t want to wake him up.

Hannibal’s arm is wrapped around his waist, and even if he appears to be fast asleep, his hold is strong and possessive. Exhaustion has come so quickly, they’d gathered themselves together to escape the cold, and because Will just wouldn’t let go.

Outside, Will has identified the luminous point that had caught Hannibal’s interest, earlier. A bright star, growing steadily. It keeps a watchful eye on them, he imagines, luminous and beautiful. 


	10. Chapter 10

Will is watching the cosmos when Hannibal awakes, sitting atop the pile of covers, with his hands lax on his thighs and his face covered in jaunty glimmers. They are passing by a particularly large galaxy, captured in an effervescent dance of violet and sapphire. 

Hannibal barely notices. He has eyes only for Will, shroud in the hazy glow of starlight, so close he can feel every one of his heartbeat still resonates against his skin. If Will was truly honest with himself, he would know this is how Hannibal has always looked at him.  

It makes him nostalgic. 

He stretches, tries to rouse his body a bit, and rubs his hands quickly over his arms to heat them up. “What I would give to take a shower right now.” He stops his ministration after a while, when he realizes it barely makes a difference. 

Hannibal extends one arm, places it on his shoulder, and tries to ease the tension there. 

“I would have made you breakfast.” 

“That’s an upsetting thought.” 

Hannibal appears slightly offended, drops his hand off his body. Will looks at their star on the cosmic horizon; it’s bigger now, closer, and even more bright than he remembers. He yawns, exhausted, even if  he has awaken not too long ago. “…I would have accepted coffee, I guess. The fancy one, from that ludicrous coffee maker.” 

“I would suggest it’s the mornings that you miss.” 

Will’s smile saddened. Mornings were times to run with the dogs, or sharing meals with his family; they had grown so busy. “What’s there to do.” He drops out in a heavy sigh.

.

“Were you unhappy when you were locked up?” 

Will is resting on his back, and Hannibal’s body mirrors his own, upside down, head barely touching and both pairs of eyes riveted to the ceiling. He’s prickling strands of hair on Will’s head, wrist twisted at an odd angle, placing them with a care to a design of his own.  

“I was.” Hannibal answers with a lightness that does not reflect the trauma of these past few years.

“Good.” 

Self-indulgent satisfaction blossom inside Will’s belly. 

Nevertheless, it does not ease the itching of his belly scar. It happens sometimes, when he’s managed to forget about it. Scars often itch, it’s nothing special, but his only seems to inflame when he’s enjoying some peace of mind. 

Will thought so little of him as he shared a roof with Molly and Walter, and he did so effortlessly. Sometimes, some words could trigger an image or a memory, but it was easy to drown in daily life. He could hide the scars, but he didn’t see the point, in the end. 

Once Molly kissed the scar on his forehead, and Will took her in his arm and held her there until they both passed out on the bed. 

“And were you… in this life you created for yourself?” Hannibal’s voice is shrouded. It’s a dangerous topic. Will tries to imagine his face. His fingers were already lost in Will’s unruly curls, keeping them prisoners; chaos had had the upper hand. 

Will narrows his eyes. 

“Not even during the trial. Not until I read about the Tooth Fairy in the newspaper.” 

He licks his lips, rethinking. “Maybe once, when I read that terrible article from Freddy Lounds.” 

“I believe it is some of her best work.” 

“You would think that.” Will smiles, nostalgic. “At least nobody ever brought it up to me. Perhaps they should have…” 

Hannibal doesn’t answer, and resumes his gentle work in Will’s hair. 

.

Hannibal is standing near the window. It has become a familiar picture. Whenever Will awakes, he finds the man staring at the abyss, glowing in red and blue colour, as if he is part of the cosmic scenery. Will is still scared sometimes that Hannibal will find the same fate as Callisto and her child, pulled among the stars as a nameless constellation. Hannibal wouldn’t be disappointed by this fate, he would like its poetry.

Will walks by his side, and let his hand wanders on Hannibal’s back, first pinching at the fabric of his shirt, then pulling at it, before pressing his hand flat at the centre of his body. He peers sheepishly above his shoulder.

“There’s the star!” Will points at the most brilliant one. “It’s the same one as before.” Hannibal nods at it. 

“It is much bigger than before. It grows steadily as we approach.”

Will frowns, catching on the low drift of his voice. “Is that a wrong thing? It might be a cluster, or another galaxy.” 

“I’m curious to know if it will cross our path. No matter, only time will tell.” 

Will nods, but he remains uncertain.

Hannibal lets his gaze linger a few seconds more. 

.

Hannibal is sleeping, one hand over his chest, and Will is sitting by his side, unable to. He is watching the brilliant star with worries, because there is something different about it and he cannot find what. 

He watches until distracted by a soft growl behind him. Hannibal shifts around, and looks at him with sleep-lidded eyes. He presses one hand over his face, then pinches the bridge of his noise. 

“Will.” He says in a distant voice. “I told you before, you worry too much.” He lets one hand circle around Will’s waist and pulls him closer. Will allows his body be manipulated into a chaste embrace, but his eyes still rivet upon this growing mass of uncertainty. 

“We are going straight towards it.” He mumbles. “I’m certain of that.” 

“I know.” Hannibal whispers against the skin of his neck. “But it serves you not to obsess over it.” He nuzzles in and stills, while Will’s face melts. He tries to get away at first, but softens when he feels the other’s breath slow down. Hannibal is sleeping again, and Will is left trapped under him, embarrassed yet comforted.

.

“I think the heating system got damaged by the comet.” Will is massaging his feet, the shoes abandoned at his side, one next to the other. His toes are freezing and he tries his best to improve the blood circulation. 

“Not just the heat.”  Hannibal is arranging the covers between them. “The oxygen level is inconsistent… it impacts greatly on our bodies.” 

Will’s face creases under the twists of a grimace. “I did notice we have been sleeping a lot, lately.” He blows at his uncovered feet and rubs them harder.

“Those periods of sleeps are also much longer, and heavier than before. Exhaustion happens quicker, under minimal efforts.” 

Will pulls the white socks back on, then places each feet inside in the cover of his shoes. He laces them tightly, and wriggles his toes inside. He tries to believe it did some good. 

.

Will wakes up in a haze, his body so heavy he thinks he has slept for a week. He looks out the window at first, like the passenger of a car, to check if they have arrived to destination. He registers a gloomy picture, but not much else. His vision is blurred, and his mind is still asleep. He checks on Hannibal and cuddles next to him. He sleeps some more. 

.

“Our solar system is located at 30,000 light years from the centre of the Milky Way.” Hannibal enunciates. They both stand next to each other, in front of what they decided is the central window. “At its heart lies a beast who always hunger, feeds on itself and on everything it touches. Not just ours, but every galaxy has its own.” 

Will exhales loudly, his hands squirming at his side in repetitive motions he cannot control. 

“Black holes are the horrors of the universe.” Will rubs his eyes. They are filled with water, and makes his vision blurry. “I think… I think our pace has slowed down.” He smiles an horrible smile. “I would say… I think… this is our destination.” 

Hannibal doesn’t answer. 

Before them, massive and colourful, lies an empty black sphere where every colours and light of the universe seems to converge. 


	11. Chapter 11

“Vast clouds of hydrogen and helium condense into stars and galaxies. At the beginning of our universe, the first stars to die seeded life everywhere. Their remnant created comets, and later planets.” 

Hannibal’s voice emerges amidst the thumping of Will’s heart, a beacon through fogs and rolling waves. 

Will listens still, buried under the cover of a blanket, like a kid in summer camp at night, as the oldest of his group tells stories of fright. 

“Our sun is small, and consumes its fuel at negligent pace, but a massive star cannot last as long. It ends its course in as little as a few million years, and collapses upon itself. It will shrink down to the size of a city, and then, always hungry, devours other stars, dead or alive, as it travels across outer space and augments its mass.” 

“…and leaves no trace of what it absorbs.” Will murmurs, as the gigantic mass spinning on itself bears reflection upon his blue eyes. 

There lays a silence and Hannibal lets his hand wander over Will’s covered body, before settling  in the hollow of his back. “This is a sight we are offered to behold, an unique experience. A moment of history.” 

“Yeah.” Will’s voice is hollow, and Hannibal caresses him. 

The horror glows in all kinds of blue, long tendrils of gases running after each other, spinning around a perfectly two dimensional black hole. It’s an harmonious picture, without traces of discordance.

“The gas you see converging towards the black hole is called the accretion disk. It slows down  before it reaches its core, and never touches it.” 

“I imagine it will be different for us.”

“If this is our route, it will be impossible for us to be stopped at the end. 

Will sighs in annoyance, and buries his head in the covers before him. The fabric has lost all previous smells and adopted their own as time went by. He mumbles through it.

“I see it with my bare eyes, yet my mind keeps rejecting its truth. It dismisses its evidence with an outstanding belligerence. Like… have I grown X-Rays vision during my stay here? Or is it armoured skin I’ve gained to protect myself from the radiations. It’s reality passes over my eyes like rain dripping from a roof.” His fingers clenches in the fabric as he clears his throat. “It’s a physical embodiment of faith.” 

“Nobody is truly at ease with the perspective of total annihilation.” Hannibal answers softly, licking his lips. “I have always found entropy to be God’s most monstrous devices. Contemplating this resolves the sentiment of aberration any other phenomenon carries.” 

“What will happen when we reach it?” 

“We will be crushed, and our atoms will be pulled apart. Then we will be gone.” Hannibal smiles at the perspective. “It is a grim ending, but I find comfort it not knowing our fate with certainty, because what comes after is completely unknown. Laws of physics breaks when you travel past the Event Horizon.” 

“I find no comfort in that.” 

“Perhaps entropy will be thwarted, and God’s design thrown back at their feet…” He looks towards light, meditative. “…when we reach the speed of light…”


	12. Chapter 12

Hannibal enters the room holding a platter he made out of a metal sheet. He carries it with both of his hands and, Will notices, has draped his left arm with a piece of scrap cloth to mimic a serviette. He walks with the same ease he had in his house so many time before, proud steps and an elegant smile. 

Upon the plate is disposed a few objects he has taken from the storage dugs-out, discarded earlier because nothing they found had any use for them. There’s the kettle, an old bumpy construction of metal, the kind you would expect to whistle as it heats up on the oven, with a thicker bottom and a hole near the top. Its missing handle has been tentatively fixed with strings and a piece of what looks like a copper spatula. Around it are disposed two small, mismatched cups, one Will recognized as his find, with a flowery pattern on the side, the other cylindric, polished, and dented at the top. There is even two spoons, which aren’t really spoons but evoke them in shape, to complete the set. 

He joins Will on the covers and places the platter before them, on the floor. 

Will looks dubiously at the presentation, before he notices steam coming out of the teapot. He encircles its body with both hands and pulls them out almost immediately, wincing. “It’s hot!” He looks at Hannibal as if he was a magician. 

“The pipes.” Hannibal smiles victoriously. “I manage to extract its content in reasonable quantity.” 

Will’s entire forehead seems to rise a few inches higher, and his ears lowers, he couldn’t be closer to embodying astonishment.

Lights of azure and sapphire drowns them almost entirely. The ravenous black hole prowls patiently, and offers little else to gaze at, as they settle in for a brief respite.

“Contrary to popular beliefs, Black Holes do not vacuum you inside.” Hannibal motions towards it. “You have to go to them.” 

He wraps the serviette around the handle of the teapot, raises it to a certain height, and pours its content in each of the cups. It doesn’t smell anything, but produces a fair amount of steam, and Will instinctively pushes his chilled nose and cheeks closer. 

Hannibal hums a low note as he serves the make-believe tea, and Will pulls one of the blankets snuggly over both of their shoulders, the warmest in his opinion. 

“So if you find yourself trapped in its gravity pull, you had it coming.” Will is numb, and accepts the cup within shaky hands. He closes his eyes, his fingers now trembling under the sudden warmth, then opens them again. The black hole’s trail is beautiful, circled with gem-like clouds, nested in white fledgling’s fluff. 

“I had Mussorgsky’s _Pictures at an exhibition_ ringing in my ears for so long, I did not notice when it twisted itself into Liszt’s _Dance of Death_.” Will forces a smile. He lets the cup hover above his lips, breaths in the steam, and then pulls away. He looks at Hannibal, who has made similar work of his own cup.

“It’s going to taste like pipes.” 

“You are not supposed to ingest it, and as a doctor, I would strongly advise against it.” 

“Can you even make a legitimate diagnosis with the state our bodies are currently in?” He spins the hot water in its recipient, and watches his own reflected face distorts itself. “Would our existence cease if our body is exposed to something as traumatic as an intake of bad water?” 

“I cannot guarantee the water is potable or savoury, but I won’t stop you from drinking it.” 

Hannibal is smiling, holding the cup at a certain distance of his lips, as not to give him the wrong idea. Will hesitates, a part of him destructive enough to risk it. He pictures the hot water sliding down his body and warming his belly, chasing the fog of cold and the hardship of the travel.

He reluctantly pulls the cup back down anyway. 

Time passes and the tea loses its heat. 

“Tell me a secret longing of yours.” Will mutters as Hannibal refreshes his tea.

The older man narrows his eyes.

“Just… tell me something you wish you still had time to do.” 

Hannibal thought for a while, pursing his lips, before he softens his eyes.

“You used to play the piano.”

“Some.”

He jerks his head a little bit, exposing his jaw to the light. “I would have liked to hear you play Chopin.”

“That’s awfully specific.” But Will doesn’t sound outraged, or surprised in the least. 

“Can I ask you something, then?” 

Will agrees with the blink of his eyes, and Hannibal looks towards space one lone time, before he speaks again.

“Why are you so terrified.” 

“I’m not.” He answers too fast. He winces a little bit, before he adds. “It’s an old fear, nothing that should matter.” 

He plucks the shoelace from his pocket and let it lay in his palm, out in the open. 

“I told you I read a lot about space, when I was young. It ended with Black Holes. It was a hot subject at the time, I think I read something from Hawkins, or about him. I don’t know, I had nightmares for weeks. I kept dreaming I would find myself trapped in, and kept falling and falling again. Death never scared me as a child. This.” He gestures towards the hellish mouth opened before them. “This was constant terror.” 

He twists the shoelace between his fingers, dangles it above the floor. “Then I grew up, and felt fine about it. They are just stars that keep dying. An ending that won’t stop.”

“Once a brilliant man told his son stars were ghosts. We can see their light, as they travel to us, but their bodies are long gone.”

Will smiles, and allows the shoelace to fall on the ground.  It spirals briefly and gets lost between his crossed legs. He raises his head and looks away from the black hole, towards the little part of the celestial space that isn’t obliterated by the massive presence yet. Stars are still visible but hard to see. 

“You know, Abigail must be somewhere, too.” He takes the cup again and presses it close to his chest. “If lights departs from Earth and travels out like the stars, however feebly… there, she might still be alive… wandering the cosmos.”  He cuts his thoughts abruptly. “Not like us. She’s carrying her whole world with her.”

He can see her smiling, as she walks to school with some friends, or going on a hike with her mom. Then, he’s hit with flickering pictures of her face, white and bloodied, her hand grasping at her ripped throat for air she cannot get. A state of perpetual death. “Maybe she can find another fate.” 

Hannibal follows his gaze, sharing the same vision amongst the stars. Will’s voice falters as he speaks next. “Perhaps she can stay in those times of her life where she was happy.” 

Hannibal pulls the blanket closer around them and Will leans on his shoulder. 

“That’s not what will happen to us, though. The black hole will destroy every trace of us, leaving nothing, not even atoms.” His arms jerk in a circular motion, which encompasses his entire view, like the final stroke of a brush. “Every traces of our lives will be gone from this universe, quantum mechanics be damned.”

“…And how does that make you feel?” 

Will finds it in him to smile at that. “I don’t know, _doctor Lecter_. Many things. It feels like punishment. Not just retribution by death but complete obliteration. It’s… I don’t know. Powerful.” 

“A dying star does not have the sentience to impart justice… nor should it be influenced by your own sense of guilt.” 

“I understand that.” Will admits. “…Yet a part of me cannot detached itself from the fact that this feels well-served.” 

He thinks it through, before he adds. “There is a certain amount of satisfaction in knowing you were not wrong in hating yourself… or part of yourself.” 

Hannibal doesn’t object to that particular idea right away. He let silence settle in, until Will is warm and cozy against his body. He speaks in a quiet, loving tone.

“Nothing survived the Big Bang, no information or data remains. Everything that came before was lost. But what if _we_ could keep something” He spoke as if defying the black hole itself.

“What?” His drowsy state is cut sharp in surprise. 

“If you are right, and we are condemned to such a fate, would there be something you would like to save.” 

Will looks up, doubtfully. “A memory?”  

“It’s whatever you want it to be.”

He blinks. There were happy memories, in his life, there were some that were less. There were people he cared for, and some he still cared about, even if they were gone. He did own plenty of good, heartfelt, even beautiful moments…  Yet at present, his mind was blank, as if they were all out of reach. 

“There’s just nothing that comes to mind.”

The ship gives out a rumble. It happened from time to time. It starts with a low purr, then a violent jerk; their ship was beginning to show issue with the distorting pull of gravity emanating from the black hole. Will, startled, drops the cup of tea he was still holding.  It clatters to the floor, water splashing down on his pant and shoes, without burning him. The cup cracks on its side, a single line branching in like a tree. 

He looks at it in surprise at first, but then he smiles in astonishment. He begins to laugh next, holding himself on Hannibal’s shoulder not to fall down. He’s barely containing himself. “My first thought was to wonder why it didn’t just float away, without gravity to pull it back, and shattered itself on the ceiling. ” 

Hannibal let him laugh until he’s trembling, and pulls him closer. 

.

“I would like to share a memory.” 

Will head is back on against his shoulder. He is breathing in his shirt, eyes half closed, vanquished by fatigue. He nods slowly. “One you wish to keep…?” 

“One I wish would survive us, yes.” 

Will can hear the change in his voice, a slight tremor he keeps buried, almost imperceptible but to the man who has his head pressed near his lungs. 

“Then please, tell me.” 

“It’s a memory I share of my sister, Mischa. She was very young, and I, myself, was no more taller than half of what I am now. My parents were both recently deceased, and I was now charged with her as my responsibility. It was in the last days of spring.” 

He raises his head towards the ceiling, a pale smile on his lips, as he searches for details lingering in dangerous places of his mind. 

“The wind was cold and summer was late coming. The trees were still in bloom, and the grass was not yet green. We had walked to the market that day, and I had hoped to put my hand on eggs or meat, something consistent as my sister was losing weight, but I was not in luck. On our return, a neighbour offered us a small bag of Tilia flowers and leafs. Many bordered her house and she had spent the past few days collecting them in bags for keepings. Mischa was euphoric, bouncing the jute bag like a balloon.” Hannibal smiles fondly. “She tormented me until I agreed to prepare the tea immediately upon our return. She was cold, and it suited me, as we had barely anything to eat.”

“To prepare Linden tea,” He says, “I would have to crush the flowers and leafs in a pot of boiling water until it the scent is strong enough and the colour amber. I always used to put in more flowers because they gave the tea its sweet taste. It's similar to honey, I knew Mischa would enjoy it more.” 

“I found her out in the garden. She had placed one of the tablecloth under a tree, and plucked some flowers to decorate. I placed the teapot with the cups not unlike I did earlier, poured some for her. She was so excited she burned her tongue. She was still very chatty, but as Linden tea holds soporifics properties, she eventually calmed down and soon, we fell asleep together.” 

He sighs deeply. “I woke up and she was gone from my side. I remember being blinded by the bright sunset above my head, as searched for her with my eyes. She was gone.” 

.

Will is soundly asleep; his body has slid closer to the floor and his head is now resting against Hannibal’s waist and thigh. Hannibal keeps him close with one hand, petting his arm gently. Outside, the monster grows bigger and bigger and a blue haze inundates every corner of their room. Hannibal cannot think of something more beautiful than a sleeping Will clothed in the petals and sequins of a black hole. 

_How distasteful a thought to have the universe exist without him._ Hannibal let his eyes glide along the sharp line of his neck, and entombed themselves under the edge of his collar. He used to believe the love he experienced for his sister, pure and selfless, transcended all others. Yet looking at the shape of Will, small against his side, it was as though he had been given his first breath of air, after drowning for a lifetime.

He could sketch the curls of Will’s hair in broad strokes, the sharp edge of his jaw and the arc of his back by memory, but he could never reproduce this. Each moment with Will was one he wanted cast in bronze, but at the same time, he was selfishly appeased to know they would be gone with him. 

“The sun we see, Will, is always 8 minutes late.” He repeats, his voice almost forlorn. 

Then he pulls his hand and places it against the light, letting it slip between each of his fingers. 

One finger was missing. 

He wiggles the other ones, all receptive, as if nothing has changed, yet the last one doesn’t move. It’s just gone, as if the light has been sucked out of it and left nothing but its shadow. 

He sighs, and drops it on his lap, revealing the beast behind it. 

“Soon we will cross the Event Horizon, and perhaps we will reach the speed of light. It is the true elixir of life, Will. Our biological clock slows down compares to the ones we leave behind.” 

He doesn’t hear Mussorgsky, not Liszt either. It’s Thaïs’s _Meditation_ that plays for him.


	13. Chapter 13

Will has Molly’s hat on his head, and she has his. She’s hidden behind some trees and her reserve of snowballs appears infinite. 

It’s snowing, the weather’s not too cold. Winter has been harsh in its first few months, but it has softened since.

“It’s not fair! She always hoards them.” Wally’s voice is exasperated, but not defeated; competition always keep his mind sharpened. He’s had Will two times by surprise, one while distracting him with the dogs, another, unfairly, by faking an injury.  Now they have come to a shaky truce, and teamed up to take down Molly, who, better than both of the boys, reigns queen over the snowball fight. 

“The trick with your mom is that she has a big heart, and she would never…” 

The snowball hits him on the back of the head and Walter starts laughing loudly, sniffling snot back in his tiny red nose. Will quickly turns around, brushes the snow off of his hat, but finds no traces of the culprit. Walter points to some direction enthusiastically while holding his belly. 

The snow is falling down thickly, a change of pace from before. It makes it hard to see far away. Will smiles anyway, and calls out for her. There’s the sound of his dogs barking nearby, scattered here and there, but no Molly.

He hears Walter call for Molly too, and then runs in one direction. “Come on! I see her!” He yells, and Will tries to follow, but he’s not altogether good at running in the snow. They are hot on her trail still, as snowballs start flying up their way. He catches a glimpse of her coat behind the dancing white fluffs, a sweep of sharp colours.  

The snowflakes are numerous and the wind, stronger than before. He’s brushing snow off of his eyes constantly, trying his best not to lose track of Molly’s bright, yellow scarf, or the big pompom on Wally’s hat, but it gets hard.

“Molly?” He calls, his voice growing worried. “I give up!” He raises both his hands in the air, but she doesn’t stop. None of them does.

She’s nothing but a blur. He has to stop, his lungs burning inside his chest. When he looks back up, he finds no more trace of them. It’s maddening, as if they have just disappeared into thin air. He calls for her again, calls for Walter, calls for his dogs, but no one answers.

He thinks of Jack Torrence at the end of _The Shining_ , slowly freezing in the labyrinth, while his son and wife escape the blade of his axe. He remembers he’s made this nightmare countless times in the past. He sits down in the snow, and waits.

.

Will’s eyes are still blurred when he wakes up. He smacks his hand over them to hide from the invasive light and finds himself staring back into the soulless eye of the black hole; it now spreads itself over at least ten windows. 

He pushes back in fright, loses his balance. He drowns in the many covers littering the floor, panic rising inside his throat as he grasps for a hold of any kind. He finds none, and keeps on sinking. Then, Hannibal’s hands are on his shoulders, dragging him up to the shore. 

“Sh—, it’s…” 

“Much bigger. Yes.” The blue gases spread out over the horizon, its incandescent light always growing in mass. Warning bells resounds at a deafening magnitude in Will’s brain, and his heart is drumming maddeningly, pumping dreads inside his body.

“The Event Horizon. Have we… ” 

“No. Not yet.” Hannibal presses his hand against his face, pets his cheeks and massages the back of his neck. “When we get past the point of no return, it could last for the blink of an eye, or a lifetime.”

Will repeatedly nods, lowering his gaze, and then stops dead as he catches the sight of Hannibal’s left side. He grows paler, and his blood runs cold inside his veins.

Hannibal is impassible. Will’s eyes narrow, unable to look away, and his face shifts from dismay to accusations. 

“Your arm…” Will croaks. “It’s gone.” 

Someone flipped a pencil upside down and rubbed off the flesh and bones away. Part of his shoulder has already been pecked at. 

“It’s gone.” Will repeats, hollow. 

“I wouldn’t worry much.” Hannibal dismisses, the hand resting on Will’s shoulder now sliding up and down on his arm to comfort him. “It won’t matter in a short time.” 

But Will’s face keeps twisting itself painfully, and a heavy emptiness grows inside his guts. He’s losing balance, his body trembling under the emotion. The black hole becomes suddenly less horrifying  than what he just discovered. 

They are interrupted by a loud cracking noise and two bolts of the door shoots out. They fly past their heads and hit the adjacent window in a loud thud. The door’s upper portion has been crushed down, distorted by the pressure of gravity. As they engage closer to the black hole, the ship wheezes and creaks, like an old house during winter time.

Will doesn’t even notice. He touches Hannibal’s mangled shoulder, and then places two fingers up to the side of his neck, searching for the pulse, then presses against the jugular. He takes Hannibal into his arms, holds him against his heart, and buries his head in his chest.

“It’s a paradox, how black holes obliterate what comes into contact with them, without leaving a trace. Nothing should ever be completely gone.” Hannibal speaks quietly. “Some have theorized that information leaves imprints on the event horizon as it crosses it. Imprints that affect the radiation of the black hole.” 

His head leans against Will’s, and the hold around him tightened each time he speaks. 

“Perhaps some traces of us will linger on amidst chaos.” 

.

Hannibal is nearly gone. A disembodied arm and hand remains, and part of his face; one eye. He’s being devoured, bits by bits. It’s a painless demise. Will is having trouble breathing, and Hannibal’s soothing voice cannot calm him down. It is easy to hyperventilate when so little air is left. 

“I wanted to believe in you.” Will murmurs, pitifully. “I trusted you, again, expecting a different answer to a problem I already solved.” 

“I couldn’t have foreseen this.” 

“Oh but would it have changed anything?” He almost laugh, eyes wet. “Have you ever been something other than unfailing?” 

Will has to turn away from Hannibal’s insulted half-of-face to smother the brims of anger that burns inside him. He sniffs, his cheeks bright red and his body contracted through the pressure of mixed emotions. “Shouldn’t it be blazing? Why is it still freezing. Nothing of this makes sense.” 

He pushes away from Hannibal. He’s sweating, and shivering, both his arms wrapped around his body. 

“It’s punishment, then.” He presses one hand over his lips, then covers his mouth. “How could I have ever seen it any differently. Whoever sows the wind, shall reaps the whirlwind.”  

“No-one bears harsher judgement on you than you do yourself.”

“This is your system of beliefs, Hannibal, and they don’t seems to have served you well, in the end.” Will snaps back.

Hannibal’s only eye blinks, and his voice, rushed at first, quiets down.“You need to calm yourself. Nothing will change what is happening but your perception of it.” 

Hannibal’s remnants pales, translucent for a moment, and Will, in a fit of panic, grabs at his only wrist, and holds it too hard. He looks straight at him, though it’s mostly the empty space, as if to dare him to be gone. Then he lets him lax in his hand and laces their fingers together. There are tears in his eyes, but they are not falling yet.

“Please, Will. Listen to me. It could only be a matter of seconds. Space-Time is warping itself because of the extreme gravity of the black hole.” Will’s hole body trembles. “It will stretch time to its limit. Anything can happen. This could happen to you, too.” 

“It won’t.” He is certain of it.

Hannibal’s hand slowly etches away, until Will is grasping at thin air.

“I don’t want to face this alone.” 

“I’m not gone yet.” Hannibal says, even if he has no more body to speak with. “I’m staying here, with you. You have to trust me.” 

Will looks so scared as he contemplates these words. 

“I can’t do that. I just can’t, _Hannibal_.” 


	14. Chapter 14

The ship is so close to being ripped apart… It is crushed under an invisible weight, forced to expand and contract unnaturally. Deafening sounds thunder from above, like the laments of a whale, yet despite its impending doom, it stubbornly resists. 

“It’s constructor can pride himself in having constructed a vessel able to resist anything.” Hannibal’s words are the only thing left of him. “…Almost anything.”

The familiar voice seems to come from all directions at once. 

The black hole is everywhere; it fills every window, seeps through every cracks. There is no more stars to see, no traces of the universe left. The landscape is fractured into slices, and the vivid swirls of blue clouds spreads out of sight, like an angry sea.

“We are about to cross the Event Horizon.” Hannibal says, this time so close Will gasps in surprises. 

“I know.” He whispers back, as he faces destruction. He wants it to be Hannibal, but his mind rebels, doubts him once more. “Are you really here with me?” 

“Where else would I be?” Hannibal echoes. And it hurts, because he knows his mind is a powerful tool and that it can create believable illusions so well, when it needs to. His blood rushes to his head, frustration jerks his thoughts around. He’s going mad.

Below him, the accretion disk acts as a whirlpool, its diffused glow drowned in by its terrible pull. Particles bounce against each other in turbulent frictions, and above hovers a veil of dust and energy. It’s beautiful and sickeningly peaceful.

Hannibal is speaking, but Will cannot make up the words he’s saying.

The ships growls and he loses balance. He staggers on the deck like a drunken man as pieces of the ceilings fall around him like chunks of ice during a storm. Everything moves too fast. 

“Hannibal, please.” He calls.

“I’m here. I’m with you.”

“Tell me how I can believe that. Tell me how I can convince myself you are not just a voice I created… that I am not falling alone this time.” 

“The earth’s orbit irremediably leads it to fall into the sun, yet gravity is always there to catch it in time and throw it back away.” 

“You are not a cosmic force.” He lashes out, as his entire body shakes under another violent jolt.

“I told you before; I will stay by your side, even if I lose my voice.” 

“Don’t!” Will tries to keep himself steady, yet a sudden jerk of the ship sends him crashing against the closest window. Its surface is not cool but warm. He lies flatly on the surface, chest and arms pinned like a butterfly, forcing him to face both the horror that lays in wait below, and the reflection of his own blemish face staring back at him. 

“Humans find meaning of the world they explore through the merit of their language.” Hannibal is close again, so close Will cannot know if the words aren’t in his head. It’s timbre vibrates with emotions.  “What you are going to experience will be unparalleled, and impossible to ever find words to tell. ” 

“What I will experience.” Will squeezes the words out of his throat, scratching at the window with the little nails he has. There is nothing to look at but what is waiting for him, and the colours, cold and bright, materializes in a fiery red through the thickness of his blood. A powerful wave of vertigo strikes through and, for the briefest of time, he thinks he is already falling.

“Listen to me, Will.” Hannibal heaves. “Listen to these words.” 

This is the only thing he can still hear, asides from the beating of his heart. 

“When you will reach the black hole, it will only last a second. You will glide upon the event horizon, caught in its orbit until it swallows you. But before, you will break the first law of relativity and exceed the limits of the speed of light. Reality will warp itself around you. When it happens, look behind you.” 

He breathes.

“You’ll see the entire future of the universe unfold.” 

There is finality in his voice and Will wails a series of small, desperate ‘no’.

His lips part but the words are trapped inside his throat. He wants to tell him to stay, wants to yell at him for all the wrongs he has ever done, all the horrible things he has inflicted upon him. He wants to touch him one last time. 

. _.and when it happens, please believe that I will be by your side._

  


The world is spinning around him. Behind, the ship is irremediably breaking apart. He can feel the pull of the orbit press under his skin, within his veins. He cannot move, feels the entire room crashing down upon him. He is so close to the end there is barely any colour left to see. 

“Hannibal?” He whimpers weakly.

Hannibal doesn’t answer. 

“Hannibal!” 

Nothing.

“Please, Hannibal.” 

He pounds at the glass violently, calls him another time, then another. Hannibal doesn’t answer him. He stops and stills, hides his eyes in his forearm, mouth slightly parted. He doesn’t have the energy to cry.

The ship finally engages in its last course. It cleaves the waves of the accretion disk like a boat launched at sea, then is jolted upward and trapped in its whirl. Hannibal’s silence resonates in the room. Will breaths and breaths and suddenly opens his eyes as realization hits him. 

“It feels the same.” He murmurs, dumbfounded. “When we fell into the ocean together. It feels exactly the same.” 

_Commitment._

“All of the universe is in constant motion.” He remembers, as the ship accelerates, matters and motions changing colours and shape. “And you and I, we are going in together.” 

When the ship reaches for to the edge of the hole, it slides gracefully along its ledge, and rises, always in orbit, over the spherical structure, without breaching it. Will is paralyzed, unable to breath, or think, of feel. He’s surfing across the edge of the abyss, can nearly see its tip. Each seconds, he asks himself if he still exists. 

Then, the moment comes. He knows it instantly.

Hannibal’s last words resonate inside his head, clearer than when he spokes them last. Will turns his head around, looks through the windows behind him, parts his lips open and exhales. 

Then, the ship tips over, and falls into the black hole. 


	15. Chapter 15

In the heart of every galaxy lies a supermassive black hole. Powerful and gigantic, it contains at its heart the power of 4 million suns. Inside, there are gases in constant motions, ashes drifting like dandelions tuft, and neurones beaming informations towards the central nervous systems. Time is deformed. Everything is. 

And Will Graham is floating. It’s indistinct, he doesn’t breath, or blink, or wear anything at all. He is bare, empty, and tiny amongst the slivers of cerulean taffeta and crystalline dust. Sometimes, he’s blinded by splashes of light, reflected from massive gems in suspension, contracting and expanding like lungs. Snowflakes twirls down, glimmering in vivid colours. They stick to his hair and skin, and taste both acrid and sweet. 

Particles hover like fireflies, electrified in short bursts, and hobbling in like bubbles of air underwater, rising towards a surface that doesn’t exist. 

Even in this symphonic radiance, Will is lost in obscurity, trapped in half a sentence, with nothing to hold on to. There is nothing to fill in the darkness, no stars, no light, no nebula, nothing to paint on his canvas. He has no more will to let them in, and drifts on, his body slowly nibbled by frost. 

He hears a feeble thing. A voice he knows, and makes his heart race. He concentrates, tries to recognize a word, identify a direction. Skin draws thin around his eyes, breaking crystals of ice. Blinding blue lights dance before him, then…

…then they are someone’s eyes, round and blue, bright, with an ink-black iris at its centre that calls out to him. There’s a round face and a sharp nose, thin brows, brown braided hair. Red lips. 

It is early in the afternoon, the clock on the wall indicates 2 o’clock. November has been fair, but Abigail still wears her terracotta blazer jacket; she sits by herself on the windowsill, her hands interlaced in a sheer daffodil scarf wrapped around her neck. Her left shoulder touches the window slightly. 

Hannibal leans over his harpsichord, eyes closed and hair slightly loose on his forehead. His hands are transposing a delicate melody to light and air, with a mathematical consistency that ensconces the soft nature of his emotions so well it’s barely noticeable. His shirt looks too white for the dim ambience, creased around the shoulders where light bespeckles into incongruous patterns. The rolling motions of his arms casts shadows on the adjacent walls, dancing in the embellishments of the tapestry. 

It’s lightly raining outside. Abigail is following the raindrops inevitable descent along the glass. Her mind is lost in Hannibal’s melody, and one of her fingers traces patterns on her thigh. 

Will is nearby, nervous, looking alternatively inside his cup of coffee and at the shadows of the windows’ curtains. He can see the outline of his glasses drowning in the bitter brew. His fingers dance nervously along the side of the cup, unwilling to settle down. 

He hears something and raises his eyes. He searches for Abigail’s, then glides away to look at her cheek and settles for her ear. He looks confused, and perhaps she understands, because she repeats herself. 

“Do you think it will rain all afternoon?” 

“Do you want to go outside?” His voice shrivels. He hates that.

“I don’t know.” She looks at him with eyes so wide he thinks he’s going to fall into them. She often does so, but this time she isn’t looking besides his shoulder. “It’s nice here, too. Sometimes, it’s good just to watch the rain fall. Feels…” She let the shadow casts off her face as she choose the word carefully. “…Cleansing.”

He places his hand on her shoulder, like he suspects Garret Jacob Hobbs probably did many times before him, and offers a shaky smile.  “You don’t have to go anywhere, if you don’t want to.” 

She smiles also, but differently than before. “Yes.” She turns away. “We can share the rain if you’d like.” 

It takes a moment for him to understand, until she makes some space for him to sit down. Moving awkwardly, he manages to spill some coffee on his button-up shirt, which he purposefully ignores. Hannibal smiles fondly as he enters a new movement of his composition, slower and softer. He reduces the intonation and changes the tempo just a bit. 

An older Will watches from above and below. He tries to touch Abigail’s hair, but he cannot reach her. She barely gives him a look, her cheeks suddenly bright as she speaks to his former self, sitting nervously nearby and smelling of sickness and heat. He can still hear Hannibal’s melancholic piece, tiptoeing around them.

His lips quiver, before they twist upward and break the mould of ice they have been encased in. Warmth is coursing through his body, melting the frost. 

Will holds on to that memory with both his hands, curled in a foetal form, as if to protect it from destruction.   _This is the memory I choose to keep._ He thinks.

He sees Hannibal, brighter and younger than he remembers, his hands still on the keys, turn towards him, out of the boundaries of his memories; the only one to notice his presence. 

“All of the universe is in constant motion, Will. The stars, the galaxies, even black holes. Nothing gets stuck, nothing gets lost. Nothing is left behind.” He presses his fingers against seven keys, then he switches to others. “Now. Let us try another time.” 

Will feels a sudden pressure against his chest, a constriction that compresses his thoracic cage and a vivid pain. He thinks his body is collapsing, and opens his mouth to yell. He fights against inertia, each of his motions distorting lights around him. He finds footing into thin air and propels himself upward. 

Holding his memory with both of his arms, he fights against the freezing current and lunge at the surface. He crosses the clouds and flows of gases, kicks the pixels and particles and atoms away, and swims against the waves that entangles his limbs. 

He sees Molly and Walter, running along with his dogs; they wave him goodbye and he manages to smile at them. 

He is suffocating, his movement becomes erratic. He tries to see where he’s going but everything begins to shine so brightly he cannot keep his eyes open. He closes them but the light manages to reach in. His lungs are burning, urging him to push faster. It hurts, but he persists. He opens his eyes; he can see the surface, stretching above his head. He extends one hand to grab at it.

He gives one last effort, breaks to the surface and finally breathes. 


	16. Chapter 16

  

Will Graham can see the sky above his head, and name each and every one of the constellation. The moon is wide and full, surrounded by the cosmos, and reflecting the sun’s light all over the land. The water is cold, and the wind is low. He is peaceful, in suspension, floating in the ocean all alone, eyes half-closed. He waits for a moment, watching ghosts above his head, until he finds the desire to move.

He’s carried by the motion of the waves, until the currents warm up, then he swims for a long time, without ever feeling tensed or pained, or tired. The ocean stretches everywhere until suddenly there is land, and so he ferries himself towards a rocky shore.

He crawls onto pebbles and shells, fingers gracing at powder and dust, shards and bits of twigs. Even leafs, although there are no trees around. He drags his heavy body out of the reef crest and there lies Hannibal, still, and dry, one hand over his breasts, watching the stars above him. His chest rises and falls in a slow pace, and his hand follows. His shirt is bloodied and torn, he is missing both of his shoes and carries only one sock.

Will lays by his side in sopping noises and ragged frictions. His clothes are no better, they show the marks of his travels. He closes his eyes for a moment and he breathes, catches the saline mists of the early hours of the day, the smell of sweat, of algae and then the rumbling brine. He is cold, and shivers under the breeze. Will blinks, and then he narrows his eyes slightly.

“I tried to shut down the sound of your voice in my head for so long.” It’s a whisper, barely a thought in his mind. “…Until it was gone. Then I realized…”

He listens. Hannibal’s breathing changes just a slight, as acknowledgement.

“I didn’t want it to be gone anymore.”

He pulls his head back, stretches his neck, leaving his throat opened. He exhales all of the starlight still clustered in his lungs.

“It’s the end of summer. You can see the Lyra, and the Sagittarius constellations.” Will tries to etch a smile. “Its brightest stars are easy to recognize as they form a teapot. The milky way is at its densest around it, and it contains the lagoon nebula, which appears grey on a telescope, but is actually pink.”

He pauses, out of breath. Still he feels no pain, as if the salted water has healed his body of all wounds and scars.

“Five months since we fell.”

“It could be any summer. Past, present or future. A lifetime more. Or less.” Hannibal says and Will’s entire body warms up. “How many days does it take to reconstruct an entire universe.”

Above their head, the sky is moving. The stars travel the cosmos, burn and die and birth galaxies; celestial objects are suspended at the tail of comets, spiralling out of control and passing them over. Maybe, one day, they will meet one they recognize.

Will is lying down, holding in his mind all the secrets of the universe. He pulls his chest up with his shoulder, wincing at the effort, and turns towards Hannibal. He let one hand glide along his chest, takes a hold of his shirt, and pulls himself over. The touch makes them both shiver. Hannibal is cold, they both are. Hannibal talks of resurrection but Will reaches for his mouth and silences him with a kiss. It tastes of salt water and linden tea.

**Author's Note:**

> After having written the climax I realized it closely resembles the one from The Little Engine that Could.
> 
> Another good cheer for [Curious Canvas](http://curiouscanvas.tumblr.com/)'s amazing art. I hope you enjoyed the story : >


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